


i don't wanna be your enemy

by smc_27



Series: short fics [1]
Category: The Society (TV 2019)
Genre: Canon Divergent, F/M, Post canon, Pre-Canon, canon 'verse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:26:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 23,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28416828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smc_27/pseuds/smc_27
Summary: a collection of drabbles originally posted to tumblr. a mix of pre-canon, post-canon, canon 'verse, and canon divergent.
Relationships: Harry Bingham/Allie Pressman
Series: short fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2081244
Comments: 22
Kudos: 45





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pre-canon. prompt: Oh, why’d you have to be so cute It’s impossible to ignore you Why must you make me laugh so much It’s bad enough we get along so well

When he’s 16 and Allie’s 15 and he teases her about this bracelet she’s wearing, Cassandra corners him in the drama room after play rehearsal and tells him to stay away from her sister. 

He tells her to fuck off, laughs in her face, and thinks that’s probably the day she learns to really, properly hate him. 

It’s not his fault Allie’s like, this adorable person who is genuinely, seriously nice to everyone, and doesn’t carry all Cassandra’s stuck up need to please everyone around her. Cassandra pisses him off, but Allie makes him smile. 

When he’s 17 and dating Kelly and can see that Allie’s really got it bad for that kid Will, who Harry thinks is sort of a prick to her, Harry tells her she looks pretty at homecoming. She looks at him like he’s speaking Latin, but says thank you anyway. 10 minutes later, she’s waiting in the hallway when he walks out of the gym, and she looks sort of pissed. Or something. He can’t recognize it. She’s always either smiling or looking bored as she does whatever Cassandra wants her to do. She asks if he only did that to piss Cassandra off. He’s annoyed, so he says that unlike her, not everything he does has to do with her sister. He knows he’s crossed the line, and he hopes the way he looks at her lets her know it. She just rolls her eyes like he’s irritating and walks off with her blue dress swishing around her thighs. 

His first day back to school after his dad’s funeral, he’s standing in the parking lot with his backpack over his shoulder and sees Allie running towards the doors. He smiles, just a little - as much as he can muster - because she runs like a maniac, all blonde hair and feet hitting the pavement too hard. 

She stops when she sees him, says, “Oh fuck,” and it’s such a stupid reaction that it makes him laugh out loud. “Hey. Hi.”

“Hi.” 

He looks past her and up at the building. Allie looks over her shoulder. 

“I’m late. Might as well skip at this point,” she says, and sounds a little nervous. “If you aren’t ready, or…”

Harry thinks he could fucking hug her. He doesn’t. But he thinks he could. 

A thing he realizes before they’re even pulling out of the parking lot, is that Allie Pressman looks really hot sitting shotgun in his car. 

“Where to?” he asks, just because the silence is killing him. He’s been living in it for two weeks. His mom’s been miserable and his sister’s been clinging to her. Harry’s been mostly alone. The only reason he came back to school is he got tired of sitting sound in his house feeling like nothing would ever be normal again. 

(Allie Pressman sitting in his car as they skip school is far from fucking normal, either, but it’s decidedly better.) 

“Wherever you want.”

He thinks she doesn’t mean for that to sound hot, but it does. 

He doesn’t know where to take her. The last thing he needs is Cassandra breathing down his fucking neck about spending time with Allie. 

Allie says, “Let’s get ice cream,” and smiles at him prettily when he looks from the clock, to her. She shrugs a shoulder like she doesn’t care that it’s 9:14am. 

He couldn’t tell you what the hell he’s thinking when he says, “Wanna go to New York?” but Allie’s face nearly splits in half with her smile, and he thinks, for a second or two, that he’d do a lot to make her smile like that again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pre-canon. prompt: books

He meets her in the library, because that’s where she said to meet. He doesn’t typically like it when people try to tell him what to do, but something about the way Allie said it made it sound like she was tired, or something, and he felt like arguing about it would’ve made him feel like an asshole. So he left it be, and he shows up with his battered copy of this play they’re supposed to be doing a report on in one hand, and a pencil in the other. 

Can’t say he thought Allie was the Pressman he’d be paired with on assignments this year, but it turns out she’s smart as hell and taking this English class a year early so she can take classics next year, or something. That’s what she said, voice all clipped, the second day of class when he asked if her sister’d sent her to take notes, or something. 

Anyway, he’s not even late. She almost looks impressed. 

“Hey,” he says, and wonders why she’s so deep in the stacks he almost couldn’t find her. He wonders if it’s because she doesn’t want anyone to see them together. (Or if she doesn’t want someone specific to see them together.) Harry sits down across from her and thinks her pink sweater is cute. She pushes her hair off her shoulder. He thinks that’s cute, too. 

(Okay, he just thinks she’s cute. It’s not a big deal.) 

“Hey. Did you read it?” 

He nods. Right to business. Okay. He can work with that. “All of Act 1. It’s...kinda shit.”

She smiles, but looks like she’s trying not to. “I’m sure Shakespeare cares about your opinion.”

“No, that’s...I like Shakespeare. This play is trash. I read it like, three years ago, too.” Something flashes in her eyes like she’s surprised or impressed. “My dad has a lot of books.” Shit. He looks at her from under his lashes. “Had.” 

“So you were, what, 14 just casually reading Shakespeare plays?” she asks, little smile on her lips. (He appreciates that she didn’t dwell on the dead dad thing.) 

Harry leans forward, wonders why she’s got two notebooks and her whole pencil pouch on the table between them. He picks up her eraser. It’s a little strawberry. She almost looks embarrassed. Whatever. He thinks it’s kind of adorable. 

“15,” he corrects. For some reason he wants her to know he’s 18. It’s stupid. He knows she’s a year younger. “Kinda like you’re what, 17, and taking AP English a year early?”

“I’m smart,” she says, sort of defensive. 

He says, “I know,” because it’s true and it feels important. 

Allie meets his eyes across the table and almost looks like she wants to thank him, or something. Then her teeth dig into her bottom lip and she reaches for her strawberry eraser from his hand, sits back and gives him a look that’s way too hot for them to just be sitting in the library about to work on a lame group project. 

“How do you wanna do this, Harry?” she asks, and he holds his breath, waits for the urge to say something flirty to pass. 

“You’re so smart, why don’t you tell me?”

Allie laughs, shakes her head and drops her pencil on the table. “I’m not gonna boss you around. I’m not my sister.”

She looks guilty, or something, as soon as she’s said it. Harry just grins, crosses his arms over his chest and leans back in his chair. 

“I like you,” he observes. 

That’s the moment Allie Pressman looks hot as fuck when she’s proud of something.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pre-canon. prompt: social media

Honestly, it should probably feel like a worse idea than it does when he realizes the safest way for them to talk the way he wants to is via DM. But he’s got a girlfriend and Allie’s got a sister who thinks he’s a piece of shit and a best friend who wants to be protective as hell and yet not take her off the market. 

Not that he thinks she’d appreciate that expression. It’s just he thinks she’d agree that Will doesn’t really get to have an opinion about it, because if Harry’s reading things right - and he knows he is - Will could have Allie if he wanted her. 

He doesn’t. And Harry does. And so fuck it. 

He DMs her the first time when she posts a clip of play rehearsal when they’re all just sitting on the stage reading from their scripts. It’s like, the third practice. He messages her, asking isn’t she supposed to be getting the talents’ consent before posting imagery online? She sends back the eye roll emoji and then ignores him the next day. It’s weird that he likes annoying her. Isn’t that weird? He just likes her reactions. 

He’s walking down the hall with his arm around Kelly’s shoulder, and when they pass Allie, he can see she’s scrolling Instagram. When they get to the caf and Kelly goes off to sit with Helena, Harry pulls out his phone, opens the app, and tells Allie she looks cute today. 

Yeah, this is… Whatever. He and Kelly are - he’s pretty sure - headed for a break or a breakup or an off again or whatever the fuck it is they do. And he’s bad at being by himself. Gets into trouble. Gets sad. Doesn’t like how much time he has to think. It’s certainly fucked up to use a girl as a distraction from all that, buthe can test the waters and try it out, right? He thinks Allie can hold her own. He thinks she’ll tell him to fuck off if she wants him to cut it out. Why does he like that so much, too? 

Honestly, he just likes knowing where he stands. He doesn’t like guessing. He doesn’t want to feel like he’s just bugging someone or being a burden or like they don’t care. With Allie, he feels like she’ll be direct but not rude. 

She replies with three question marks, which he definitely thinks is cute, too. He sends back the shrug emoji, and then when he sees her again later, she sort of looks at him like she wants to know what he’s playing at, but she’s also intrigued by it. It’s hot. 

The next day, she DMs him first. She tells him his sweater makes him look like a character off Gilmore Girls. He doesn’t know what that even means, but it feels like an insult, and when he looks over at her - because she’s literally standing like 15 feet away - she’s got this little grin on her lips as she looks at her phone. He writes back that her sweater makes her look fucking hot. 

She meets his eyes across the stage, and he can see the blush on her cheeks as she starts typing something back. She says that some of them have taste. 

Fuck, why does he like it when she roasts him? 

“Phones away, Harry,” their teacher says. He rolls his eyes as he does it. Allie’s still got hers out, but she doesn’t have a part in the actual play, so it’s fine. 

When he checks later, there’re like six DMs from her and it’s like a livetweet of his actions through rehearsal. She’s fucking funny. 

He times it so he can leave through the door with her and leans down to say, “Phones away, Allie.”

She shrugs. “Maybe if you were smart enough to get a task behind the scenes, you wouldn’t have had to stop.” 

His brow goes up and he crosses his arms as they stand in the hallway. She was the last one to leave. Cassandra’s already down the hall at her locker. 

“You saying you didn’t want me to?” he asks, and god, she’s just so nice to look at, you know? Especially when she’s biting back a smile. 

“I probably should, right?” There’s something in that. Something to it. She’s probably right. Cassandra would fucking lose it on both of them if she thought something was going on. And nothing is. They’re just flirting behind his girlfriend’s back, that’s all. Shit. “I should go.”

She tips her head towards her sister, and Cassandra’s just standing there looking at them with all sorts of judgment. 

Harry bends his head a little, and Allie looks like she likes it. He likes it, too. Way more than he should. It feels...it feels different with Allie than it does with Kelly. Different good. 

“I’m gonna keep doing it ‘til you tell me to stop,” he tells her quietly, and yeah, he said it like that on purpose. Very much on purpose. He wants to see her blush again. 

She says, “Don’t threaten me with a good time,” and then laughs, and Harry’s fucking stunned, and she walks away and leaves him standing there. 

He pulls his phone out after he’s stopped, you know, watching her walk away, and messages her that she’s better at this than she thinks she is.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pre-canon. prompt: "thanks for marrying me"

“Everyone else drew numbers,” the teacher tells them, and Allie’s standing there with her arms crossed, her eyes on her shoes. Harry’s just watching her. “But since you were both absent Friday, you’ll be paired together, unless either of you has a concern with that.”

Allie looks up a little, catches his eye. It’s like she’s waiting for him to cite some grievance, or something. Which is sort of weird, because that’s definitely what he’s waiting on her to do. He gives her a little shrug and he thinks she almost smiles back.

“Okay,” she tells Mrs. Martinez, and then they stand there getting the outline of the assignment. 

He didn’t think he should have to take this class. Which is why he didn’t take it last year. It’s just that his guidance counselor this year told him it’s a req to graduate, which is fucking annoying. It’s like, meant to be ‘life skills’, or something. So far they’ve learned basic personal budgeting, job interview skills, and they’ve all had to learn to change a tire. It’s a complete waste of time. But it’s also the easiest shit he’s done his entire high school career, and that includes gym, so whatever. He can manage. He was just sick on Friday and missed getting paired off for this assignment where you’re supposed to manage a household, or something. 

Harry’d made a comment on this being unethical, like, forcing people to get fake married to each other and pretending they’re a family. But Mrs. Martinez had set him straight pretty fast, told him that there are lots of reasons for people to live together that don’t include marriage, yada yada, and that the point of the assignment was less about people cohabitating and more about people sharing the workload for a difficult activity. He stopped listening once he realized he couldn’t get out of the assignment. 

“So, how do you want to do this?” Allie asks after they’ve left and are walking down the empty hall together. This was their last class and they were held back after for this. He wonders how she’s getting home. Cassandra usually drives. “We could meet after school? I have something Saturday, but we could work on Sunday?”

Yeah, since the rest of the class got to spend this past weekend working on their assignments, he and Allie have been extended the next weekend so they’ll have the same number of days to complete it. 

“What do you have on Saturday?” It must be a stupid question, because she gives him a look as if to remind him it’s none of his business and very much not the point, here. “After school and Sunday are fine.”

She seems confused. “Really?” They stop at her locker and Harry shrugs, wants to know why she finds that notable. “I just figured your social calendar was more packed than mine.” 

“Mm.” He throws on a grin, taps his temple, leans in a little. “That’s what I want you to think.”

He starts to walk away before she can realize he’s telling the truth instead of a joke. 

-

The first thing they have to do is this exercise online that assesses their skills and interests and then tells them what kind of jobs they’ll have and what their salaries will be. That’s the starting off point for their budgets, because it’ll take into account student debt and shit. Which...Frankly, it isn’t a thing he’ll have to worry about in reality, but he gets that that’s not the point. 

He and Allie sit together at his kitchen island, both their laptops open, doing this assessment. He thought she’d be weird about coming to his place instead of staying at school or going to the library or her own house. When he asked if she wanted to go to his, she just asked what kind of after school snacks he has on hand. He’s not exactly an ‘after school snack’ kind of guy, but there’s a ton of food at his place and she can have whatever she wants. He puts together a sort of charcuterie and she jokes that her snacks at home were like, fruit and string cheese. He turns on the gas fireplace because it’s snowing outside and he likes the look of the mantle. He doesn’t know why he’s trying to impress her, but he definitely is. 

“Oh,” she says, sitting back in her seat once she’s done. She’s turned her screen away so he can’t see. She did that when he asked how she was answering certain questions and she told him to stop trying to copy her. 

“What?”

“Are you done?” she asks, and he nods, doesn’t find that he’s particularly surprised by the results. Which is good, because it’s definitely his plan, and anyway, he did one of these at the start of the year before applying to and getting early acceptance to college. “Count of three?”

They turn their laptops to show their screens, and his brows go up when he sees her answer. 

It’s the same as his. 

She rolls her eyes and takes her computer back. 

“Figures,” she says, then slides her eyes towards him. “Was there any doubt you’d be a lawyer?”

He doesn’t know what that means.

“What does that mean?”

Allie tilts her head. She looks hot with this little smile on her lips. “You’re rich, smart, hot, and like to argue. Isn’t that a free pass to the bar?”

Harry laughs too loudly, really, for such a stupid joke. Then he flashes her a grin. “You think I’m hot?”

She squints at him like she’s annoyed, opens Excel on her computer. “I’m not playing this game with you.”

“What game?”

“Where you pretend you don’t know you’re hot, and act like my saying it out loud is in any way shocking.” She’s almost laughing. It’s pretty. He kind of wants to move them closer to the fireplace, because he thinks maybe it’d be more comfortable, and they could… “Have you ever made a budget? You see, it’s this thing most people have to do to make sure they have enough money to cover…”

“Shut up,” he laughs, leaning over to see what she’s typing on her screen. His shoulder kind of presses against hers. She doesn’t move, and instead just looks pleased with herself for her little comment. 

-

“We should consider marriage,” he tells her when she approaches him by his car where they said they’d meet. They’re going to her place to work on this shit today. He’s not entirely looking forward to it, but when she asked if he’d mind, she added that Cassandra won’t be there before he had to ask, so. It’ll probably be fine. 

“What?” she sort of sputters out. 

“I looked it up. There’re tax incentives.”

Allie rolls her eyes and gets into his car. He tells her about it as they drive, and before they get out in her driveway, she says, “Fine, but I’m not taking your last name.”

It’s a joke. It’s funny. 

He says, “Pressman-Bingham? Like, can a guy get a hyphen?”

She pulls her keys out of her backpack and shoots him a smile he’s learning means she’s about to make him laugh. 

“A guy can get a fancy ring and all the tax benefits and the absolute pleasure of being married to someone as fantastic as me.”

He does laugh, follows her into her house, and says, “My lucky day.”

She introduces him to her dad, and then they go up to her room to work. Her mom invites him to stay for dinner, but he politely declines. 

-

They’re on his bed looking up apartment listings in Boston, and he learns their taste is super different. Which isn’t really surprising. And they really don’t need to still be doing this; they just needed a basic understanding of a range to put down for rent in this stupid assignment. But then Allie made a gagging sound when he showed her one place that had some amazing exposed brick, and countered with one that was further away from downtown but had more ‘character’, or whatever. 

“We could buy.”

Allie rolls her eyes. “We’re supposed to have debt. That’s part of this whole thing.”

He shrugs, pulls up MLS. “My grandfather made his first millions in real estate.” Allie turns, leans away from him a little. Why they’re lying on their stomachs like this, he doesn’t know, but he’s comfortable. “What?”

“You realize that’s an insane thing to be able to say, right? His first millions? Plural?”

Harry thinks he might be blushing. Allie calls him on this shit and has been all week. And he gets that part of that’s because of the assignment, but some of it is that she’s giving him a different perspective. 

“I’m saying it’s important to invest,” he tells her, and then shows her this listing for a small bungalow in a town outside the city. “I’ve gotta think having equity would be worth it in the long run, right?”

She says something about him being concerned about equity and tax breaks like a true rich kid, but then she’s clicking through the pictures on the listing. 

“This house is cute as fuck,” she admits, which makes him laugh. 

He pulls up a mortgage calculator and they build the downpayment on the loan into their budget. 

-

They’re at the grocery store on Sunday for the last part of their assignment. They’ve got to grocery shop for a week and spend under the amount budgeted for based on their salaries, or whatever. Allie looks hot in her leggings and green cropped sweater, which are things she doesn’t wear to school but he thinks she should. Well, no. He thinks he’d like to see more of her like this. 

He thinks he’d like to see more of her in general. He’s had fun with her this week.

“We can save like, sixty cents if we get the off brand,” she tells him when they’re in the canned food aisle going down their list and noting prices. 

“Yeah, but at what cost? Don’t we deserve the finest?” She laughs, shakes her head at him, and he does a quick tally to make sure they actually have enough. “I think we can spend the sixty cents to get the good tomatoes.” 

She sighs, presses her lips together and says, “Whatever you say.” Then she pauses, tilts her chin up and smirks at him, which throws him for a loop. “Honey.”

He’s probably blushing again. He thinks he must be. Because Allie looks away, tucks her hair behind her ear like maybe she’s got some thoughts about it that she isn’t going to share with him in the middle of fucking Whole Foods.

They go back to his to finish compiling all their files, and read over everything for grammar and whatever. It’s always Harry’s least favourite part before handing shit in, but he knows it’s important. Allie chooses a font she likes and they write an intro and rationale and honestly, he’s surprised by how much fun he’s had working with her. 

When they’re done, when he’s walking her to the door, he just...He panics. 

He reaches for her hand and she looks a little confused when she turns around, but then squares her shoulders to his and looks up at him, her eyes a little hopeful, if he’s reading her right. Which he might not be. Maybe he’s just seeing what he wants to see. 

“Thanks for marrying me,” he tells her, and she breathes a laugh and shakes her head like he’s being stupid, or something. “You make a good wife. Super practical.” 

“Mhm. I hear that’s what all guys want. Practical’s at the top of their lists.”

He pulls her hand a little, steps closer, and hears her inhale a breath. “Hot, too.” Her eyes start shining with amusement or happiness or something. “Funny, smart. What else?”

She rubs her lips together, which is a thing he notices too quickly, and then says, “Maybe you have to earn the rest.” 

He feels himself smiling, feels her fingers moving against his, and asks, “Can I?”

She nods, and now would be a really, really good time to kiss her.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pre-canon. prompt: "stop making me laugh"

She thinks he’s made it some kind of mission to ruin her life. 

Okay, no. God. Being part of this stupid play and being around all the drama kids so much for months has made her dramatic as hell. He’s not trying to ruin her life. 

He is trying to needle at her every chance he gets. 

It started with him tugging her hair the day it was in one long braid down her back. She’d had this stupid thought that it was a literal cliché. That thing people say like - if a boy pulls your hair, it means he likes you. But then he’d stood in front of her, in the costume room when she was trying to sort through all the pieces that were usable and get rid of the rest, and he’d used his fingers to push this one curl back from her face. And then she’d seen him leaving rehearsal with his arm around Kelly. So she wrote it off as nothing. 

Except a few days later, he was sitting down next to her on this stupid and probably gross couch they keep backstage in the auditorium, leaning over to look at the game she was playing on her phone. He took it from her, asked her to show him how to play. They sat there for like, 20 minutes or something, until he got called back to work and whispered to her, “Duty calls,” like she hadn’t heard their director shout for him, too. 

He drove her and Cassandra home one day when it was snowing and Kelly was absent for a dentist appointment and texted him to make sure everyone got home okay. He’d winked at Allie when she was getting out of the front seat, and she’d had to hide her face from her sister all the way to the door. 

And last week, when she was making notes for set changes and doing an inventory on their props, he’d come up behind her and slid his hand across her back, laughed hysterically when she nearly jumped three feet in the air. She’d said - without thinking - that people don’t usually touch her like that, and he’d replied, his voice low and quiet and just for her, “I don’t know why not,” and looked her up and down. 

He has a girlfriend, and Allie shouldn’t want him. So if she gives him the cold shoulder, that’s fully okay. She needs to remind him to like, stop doing all this. And she could absolutely just tell him that, but…

But she doesn’t want him to stop, either. So that’s the dilemma. 

Their director, stressed as hell and acting awful to everyone, just like they all knew she would, tears a strip off them the morning before their first dress rehearsal, because none of the guys had styled their hair like she’d told them to. As if it makes any difference. She is particularly hard on Harry, who’s standing next to Allie, grinning, with his arms across his chest like he thinks this is funny, or something.   
“I think she likes me,” he whispers, and Allie is so caught off guard that she barks out a laugh and the teacher turns on her, then, and asks what’s so funny. 

Harry’s stifling a laugh, too, when Allie glares at him for getting her into shit. 

After, when she’s leaving and her mom’s waiting in the parking lot, he jogs after her in the hallway to bring her the clipboard she accidentally left behind. She thanks him, because she would’ve been in so much trouble if she’d misplaced it. 

“Literally carrying this whole show on my back,” he says, smirking, and Allie rolls her eyes. “Are you leaving without Cassandra? Can I pay admission to this show?”

It’s not funny in the slightest, but she laughs anyway, and then tells him she’ll see him tomorrow. She sees Kelly and Cassandra come out of the auditorium, and isn’t sure which of them sparks the guilty feeling she’s hit with.

The second night of the play, at intermission right before she has to call the two minute warning, Harry’s there next to her in his costume and it’s just the two of them. Honestly, these costumes are well-made and intricate, but he looks ridiculous and she’s told him that. He didn’t seem to take it well - she thinks it’s because he knows, too - so she hasn’t brought it up again.

“If I’d known you got to wear that and I’d have to wear...this...I would’ve signed up to work with you.” He’s checking her out again. He does that a lot. And blatantly. She’s started returning the favour. Which is a dangerous game that doesn’t help her at all. “You’re out here looking like a hot little cat burglar.”

It’s such a stupid thing to say it makes her laugh, then cover her mouth, and Harry’s in front of her, too close, looking down at her like he really likes how she looks more than he’s even let on. 

“Stop making me laugh.” 

“Why?” he asks, then pushes her hair off her shoulder. “I’m really into it.”

She should not look up at him, and like their height difference, and want him to kiss her. And she definitely shouldn’t say, “Me too.” 

He almost looks surprised. As if she doesn’t know for a fact that he wouldn’t have kept up with this if he didn’t think she liked it as much as he does. 

He steps back, giving her this really genuine smile she’s come to like too much, too, and then Kelly’s rounding the corner to take their places in the wings. 

After the curtain, when they’re backstage debriefing on the performance, Allie gets in shit for not calling the two minutes like she was supposed to. Harry says it was his fault, that he was asking her for help with a line because he was nervous. Kelly looks like she knows it’s a lie. 

Allie texts him to say thank you, later, when she’s home and in bed and stupidly still thinking about it. He asks what she’s doing and she tells the truth.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> post canon. prompt: you'd be the love of my life when i was young

By the time they’re 25, she’s so fucking tired of this place she wants to scream. 

There are families now. Children running around. As if any of this is anything close to normal. It’s normal because it is what it is and they’ve made it work. It’s new normal. It’s...something. Most of the time Allie can go along with that. Ignore the fact that this isn’t the real world. Or worse, that the real world wasn’t real and this one is.

Tonight, she feels bone tired, run down, and like she’d give her left arm if she could just be left alone for five fucking minutes. 

She’s got a bottle of vodka hidden away. Properly hidden, in the tiny crawl space above her closet that no one else knows is there. She’s alone in her house now. They realized in year two that the only resource in this place that isn’t just magically renewable and not an issue is food. People went back to their houses or moved into new ones. Picked ones. Whatever. She couldn’t think of a good enough reason to leave this house. She did get a bigger bed. And a good stereo. But that’s all. 

She pours some of her vodka into a flask she found in the back of a cupboard downstairs when she was looking for something entirely different, and steps outside. It’s just getting dark. One of those amazing evenings early in the summer, when you can hear people out and about, but it’s a little quiet, too. The sky’s a pretty shade of mauve and Allie gets on her bike - the only mode of transportation that exists anymore, other than foot. The flask is cold at the small of her back, where she’s tucked it into the back of her shorts beneath her shirt. 

She waves at people as she passes them Luke and Helena are walking with their two year old, Nolan. He’s a cutie and he likes Allie a lot - she never considered that she might be good with kids before Eden and Nolan came into her life in such a real way. Gwen and Clark are on again, but she thinks they’re fighting. Clark’s on the front steps of their house with a book. When she looks into Elle’s living room window as she rides past, she can see her friend dancing inside. It’s almost enough to make Allie smile.

They don’t need the guard anymore, because everything has settled down. The people who were causing shit in the beginning aren’t anymore. Things aren’t scary. Allie’s on her second official term as mayor. Really, it keeps getting bounced around between the same people, but the council members rotate a little more. She thinks it’s good this way. And she likes not having to have a fucking protection squad, or whatever. And, frankly, not being surrounded by a bunch of dudes all the time.

She bikes to the edge of town, to the bridge that sits there just before the road’s grown over with trees. It’s one of her favourite spots in New Ham. The sound of the water and the birds in the woods. The fact that it’s far enough away from houses that she can’t hear people. And that no one else ever comes here. 

Almost no one. Let her correct herself. 

She takes one swig of vodka, groans at how good it tastes, and then takes another right after. She knows if anyone caught her doing this, they’d have a shitload of questions for her. 

She wishes she had music that she hadn’t been listening to for 7 years. She wishes she had a discman or something. There are a few around. She knows Gordie has one. He’s gotten really into Bruce Springsteen lately. Found a bin of old CDs in the middle school library and listened to them on repeat, apparently. 

She hears footsteps coming towards her when the sun’s almost completely down, and smiles a little to herself. She doesn’t have to look to know who it is. He’s the only other one who comes here. 

“Want company?” he asks, and Allie nods instead of shrugging. (It surprises her, too.) 

Harry’s wearing pale blue shorts and a white tee shirt. She wants to marvel at how he can still look like a fucking Brooks Brothers model. She glances over when he sits down. He got a haircut last week and it’s too short and she doesn’t like it. But she won’t say anything. Probably. 

Harry reaches over, takes the flask from her, smells what’s inside and his brow flies up. 

“Holding out on us?”

Allie takes it back. She won’t let him drink even if he wants to. She’ll literally dump this out before letting him have a sip. “Some days are hard, you know?” is what she answers, and Harry nods, leans back on his hands. 

She can’t stand that she can see legit abs through his shirt. They’ve gotten into such good shape. He said something, one time, not too long ago when it was just the two of them in her house. He’d been playing with her fingers and said he’d never aspired to being fit, and he’d give it all up if he could eat a donut every day for the rest of his life. She’d smiled, leaned closer and said she’d take ice cream instead. 

“Wanna talk about it?” he asks, and Allie smiles a little, looking down at her feet dangling over the side of the bridge, water rushing below. 

She knows he’s absolutely serious. They do this. They talk. They get one another. Or at least they get what each other has to do as mayor. She supports him when it’s his turn. He does the same for her. She thinks it should be harder, but it’s not. A lot of things are just...what they are. They don’t have much time to analyze them because there’s no alternative and it’s better to spend the energy just getting the fuck through it. 

“Remember before?” He bristles at that. They don’t talk about the before. They don’t talk about the right when they got here either. Even when they blow off steam together, hands clutching at clothing and then at skin, breaths harsh and ragged, they never reference that he was her first or...Or, frankly, that when they’d slept together then, they absolutely had no reason to think they wouldn’t end up home where they’d have to deal with the repercussions of their actions. 

Sleeping with Harry now is less of a choice and more of a standard. Once every month or two, they can’t seem to help themselves. Afterwards, she’ll say she has needs, and he’ll laugh and ask if it’s all about her. She’ll make a joke about how well he can satisfy her, and he’ll be pulling her back into bed before she can even finish getting her clothes on. It’s their thing. She likes it. 

She also realizes, now, with a laugh, that everything they’ve said to each other has been a question. 

“Kelly miscarried,” she shares, and it’s not her news, but more than anything else she can say about Harry, she trusts him. She can’t pinpoint the moment it happened, but she knows without a doubt that it’s true. It’s a given. He trusts her, too. 

(Sometimes she thinks he’s all she has, really.)

“Fuck,” he breathes out, extends the one syllable, like he really knows how fucking awful this is. He doesn’t. He can’t. He’s never been there. She hasn’t either. That’s not the point. It’s different. 

“I took them off the schedule. Just for a bit.”

“Allie…” he says, shaking his head. 

“I know. Okay? I fucking know.” She doesn’t really mean to snap at him. He taps the flask and she wants to thank him for getting it, for knowing why she’s here and drinking. She takes a drink. 

No one knew Kelly was pregnant, other than Will, Allie, and Harry. Their absence will be seen as shirking of duties, or… They’re better at scheduling now, though. They’ll be fine. 

She looks away from him, swips a tear angrily away from her face. 

“You ever try being sad instead of angry?” he asks, and then his arm is behind her back, close enough that he’s touching her, and Allie leans closer, thighs scraping against the pavement. She leans her head on his shoulder and he turns his face so it’s against her hair. 

“You ever think I’m everything all at once?”

It’s meant to be a joke. But Harry replies, “Yeah,” all softly, and god, if she could...

She looks up at him. He’s sort of irritatingly beautiful, eyes all soft and mouth just barely curving into a grin. 

Sometimes, when he looks at her like that, she thinks he loves her. 

“Harry?” He hums, watches her look at his lips. “Maybe we should just…”

“Just what?” he asks when she doesn’t finish her sentence. 

She smiles at him, closes her eyes.  
“I think in the other world you’d have wanted to date me,” she states, then sips her vodka, still watching him, and his teeth show when he smiles at her. 

“Interesting thought.” Allie screws the cap back on, sets the drink aside. She feels better now. (Because of the guy, not the alcohol. She barely wants to acknowledge it.) “What if - hear me out - I wanna date you in all worlds?”

Allie takes a sharp breath. They don’t do this. They don’t talk about this. They talk about everything but this. But she likes it, too. It makes her feel...The tension leaves her shoulders and she might give herself away with the stupid look on her face. It’s probably way too hopeful, or something. 

“Careful,” she says, instead of doing something absolutely stupid like crying her relief. “Saying something like that might fuck up the time space continuum.”

Harry smiles, leans over and presses his lips to her temple. His voice drops and suddenly it’s the one she hears only when they’re undressed. Her favourite way he speaks. 

“Shit’s pretty messed up already. Figured I’d take my chances.” 

Allie looks at his hand as it rests on his thigh. She reaches over and wiggles his signet ring loose, then slips it onto her index finger. It’s a thing she does pretty often. She likes the way it looks on him better. He never cares that she steals it, wears it. 

She has an absolutely absurd thought: maybe she won’t give it back.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> post canon. prompt: I recall late November, holdin' my breath Slowly I said, "You don't need to save me But would you run away with me?"

She looks scared. Which makes sense, maybe. Or something. Fuck. He doesn’t know. He feels like shit in every possible way, and he doesn’t know why the fuck he’s here, other than he heard Campbell say they should “fucking shoot her like the bitch she is” and Harry shoved Campbell against the wall and then went and puked his guts out. After that, he knew he had to do something.

He’s not trying to hold her hostage, or something. He’s trying to get her the fuck out of here. 

(He’s trying to get the fuck out of here.) 

“It’s me,” he says. Whispers. She moves away from him, so her back is against the wall of the wine cellar. She’s been crying. She’s still got dried blood on her face. Harry wants to puke again. “Allie.”

“Don’t. What are you…” 

“Come with me.” He’s whispering too. Not that there’s anyone else in this house. But they’ve just gotta move fast. Before it’s light out. 

He wants to be far enough away from here when the sun comes up that no one can fuckign find them. 

No, he’s got no idea what to do after that. 

“What are you talking about? Where?”

Harry starts breathing fast, looks at his watch. It’s only 11:30. They have so much time if they leave now. 

“I don’t know,” he admits, and knows it’s not good enough. “I have a bunch of supplies, and a tent. We can…”

Her eyes light up the way he did the night he kissed her, and he starts to realize maybe this isn’t as fucking insane as he thought it was. 

She reaches for his hand and he helps her up, hands her one of the backpacks. She lets out a little laugh and says he’s out of his mind, and shit. Yeah. Probably. 

She tells him the land is due east, and no one’s explored due west and therefore probably won’t start looking in that direction. 

Harry follows her, because she’s better at this than he is. She starts running, and he’s nauseous and sweating and has chills, but he keeps up to her just fine. He stops once to throw up. She looks surprised or confused or something. He says he’s fine. She tells him they should keep going. 

They finally slow their pace to barely a walk when the sun starts coming up. She wonders how far away they are. Harry wonders if they can follow this stream forever and see where it goes. She tells him he’s watched too much Bear Grylls, and it’s the first thing that’s made him laugh in like three days. 

They find a little spot with flat rock and an overhang of dirt and stop, and she falls back on her ass, braces one hand beside her. It’s the first sign that any of this has been hard for her, other than her laboured breathing. 

“What the fuck are we doing?” she asks, laughing. Harry takes a drink from one of the water bottles he packed. He wonders if this stream’s clean enough to drink from. Maybe? 

“You wanna go back?” He’s not threatening her, or anything like that. He wipes his mouth on his coat sleeve and hands her the bottle. She’s shaking her head. “I don’t wanna sound like an asshole, but I don’t think anyone cares enough to come looking.”

Allie laughs, water dribbling down her chin. Harry looks away. “Problem solved for them, right?” 

He shrugs. He wonders how long they can stay here. He wonders how long they can survive.

“Harry.” He looks back at her again. Her eyes are all soft. Her cheeks are pink from the cold and from running. Her hair’s a mess, coming out from under her hat. “If we’re gonna keep going, we should keep going.”

Harry doesn’t take his eyes off her. “Then let’s keep going.”

… 

She cries when they spot the cabin. It’s been four days of walking, resting for no more than 10 minutes at a time, and trying to camouflage the tent for a few hours of sleep. Harry’s exhausted, starving, and he’s gotta admit he feels like he could cry, too. 

They approach carefully. He packed two hunting knives, hands her one. She looks shocked, and like she’s not sure what to do with it. He can’t give her pointers. Fuck if he knows how to stab someone. 

The door’s unlocked and there’s no one inside, and there’re no footprints leading to or from the lot. It looks like no one’s been here in a while. This is what Allie observes. He doesn’t know - he’s still scared of what happens if someone shows up. He figures they can just explain that they got lost hiking, or something. 

There’s a wood stove and dry wood, but he says they shouldn’t burn it in case people are looking for them and see the smoke. 

When they get into bed, she moves closer to him, all the blankets and the rug off the floor piled on top of them. He opens his arm and she rests her head against his chest, her knee bending so it rests atop his thigh. 

“This means there are other people out here,” she says quietly, and he’s been thinking it, too. New Ham is far as fuck away from everything, but there’s an everything. He doesn’t mean for his hand to slip under her shirt at her hip, but it’s warm there.

“Easy, Bingham,” she says sleepily, through a yawn. Harry grins. The only thing in days that’s felt normal is the easy way they talk to each other. 

“You’re warm.”

“I’m freezing.”

He lets his eyes slip closed and brushes his thumb against her. “Feels good to me.”

Allie’s quiet for a minute, then says, “You make it really hard to hate you.”

He’s never heard that before. 

Allie snores when she’s sleeping soundly.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> post canon. prompt: "But here we are, after all the messes and confessions. To the stars that we never really owned as ours."

He comes clean to spare her. He’s not gonna be precious about it. He doesn’t want her to be punished because he’s weak and Campbell’s...possibly the most terrifying person he’s ever met. He gets off without a punishment, mostly because Lexie says that at some point they’re all going to have to stop acting out of vengeance. For how all this shit started, with her, he thinks it’s a pretty rich fucking statement. But it means good things for him, good things for Allie. So he leaves it be. 

He can’t forget the look on Allie’s face when she’d said she wanted them to be friends. She packaged it all up like it was a dream land or something, but he heard what she’d said. Harry’s been thinking about it for years, too. After every private conversation they had. He’d wished things were different. Because he likes Allie. A lot. He’s liked Allie since they were kids. He thinks she’s funny and smart and pretty. And he’ll never say this out loud - especially not now - but he thinks that when Cassandra used to get out of her way, Allie was the better of the two of them for a lot of reasons. By miles, if you ask him. 

They change around housing so that the mayors and the council all live at his. Allie’s on the council, voted in by a landslide even though people are still shitty enough - someone is, anyway, to have vandalized her house with spray paint and rocks thrown through the windows. He’d caught her crying about it, but she clearly didn’t want him to see her, so he pretended he didn’t. 

She avoids him almost at all costs. Sometimes in the mornings when she’s making tea, she’ll pour him an instant coffee and then walk away, not even pushing the mug closer to him. That’s about as cordial as they get. He hates it. 

-

It’s late one night and he can’t sleep, and is getting really fucking frustrated just lying in bed hoping his eyes’ll get tired. Around 3am he gets up, heads down the hall. When he passes the room that’s now hers - the room that used to be a guest bedroom his aunt always used to stay in when she visited - he sees the light on beneath it. He’s knocking before he can stop himself. Just gently. He doesn’t want to wake anyone else. 

When she answers, the look on her face makes him feel like somehow she knew it was him before seeing him. 

“What do you need?” she asks, and he doesn’t know, just shrugs his shoulder. Allie sighs, looks him in the eye, and then pulls the door open wider. He sees she’s got a laptop open and she’s writing something. He wants to ask what she’s doing. She might not tell him, so he leaves it alone. 

“Cute pajamas,” he says, and Allie tugs her legs into bed, hiding the plaid pants from him. She’s wearing a matching top. He sits next to her and she moves over to give him more room. “Why’re you awake?”

“Why are you?” she throws back.

“Can’t sleep.” She nods like maybe it’s the same thing for her, then pushes the laptop closed so he can’t see the screen. Whatever. She doesn’t owe him shit and they both know it.

“When I couldn’t sleep - before this - “ She says it carefully, like she really wants him to hear her. He’s not sure what she’s… “ - I used to get into bed with Cassandra. She was such a heavy sleeper. She never even noticed til morning. But it helped.”

Harry feels like he can’t fucking breathe. She’s sharing this thing about her dead sister, and he knows it’s his fault that she’s not here, and he can’t change any of it, though he thinks he’d sell his fucking soul if he could. 

What he settles on is, “You could try that with me, if you wanted. When you can’t sleep.” It’s a genuine offer. He means it. If it’ll help her, it’s an invite. He knows he likes contact when he’s struggling. That’s why he held onto her wrist like a lifeline when she checked on him that time. 

“Okay, Harry,” she says, sort of shitting on the idea. He doesn’t blame her. He’d hate him, too. 

He gets up to leave, but she reaches out and grabs the sleeve of his sweater. Despite what she just said, she slides down the bed and closes her eyes. Harry stays until she’s dozed off, then gets up and goes back to his own room. He thinks about her too hard, too long. The sun’s coming up when he finally closes his eyes. 

Allie brings him a coffee in the morning, delivered right to his room. She rubs her fingertips over the back of his hand softly to wake him, says, “Drink this,” and reminds him they have to plan housing for the farm today. 

-

For Valentine’s Day, they hand out pieces of rationed chocolate to everyone in the cafeteria. Allie says something about missing getting roses from her parents. Harry wishes he could get her one of those stupid Valentine-grams or whatever they used to do at school. Some days, he thinks she’s the only one in this fucking place who gets him. Most days, he thinks she’s the only one he wants to know. 

He presses his chocolate into her palm in the evening, when she’s walking past him in the hallway after brushing her teeth. She looks at the Hershey Kiss and then at him. 

“Be my Valentine?” he asks, hoping his smirk is charming. Allie tilts her head, trying not to smile. He can tell. 

“Why should I?” She’s teasing. Harry blinks. “I could have other offers.”

He laughs, and Allie reaches out to hug him. She doesn’t do this. They don’t really touch. She hasn’t hugged him, hasn’t been this close to him since the night in his room when he leaned over her and she tugged him by the shirt and told him she was sure when he asked. 

“Thanks,” she says. 

“That’s not an answer.” He chuckles in her ear, her hair sort of sticking to his sweater when she pulls away. Her hand stays on his arm. 

“I’ll consider it.”

Harry freezes. He didn’t think she’d say yes. He thought he was just doing a stupid, cute thing to make her smile. He thought she could barely stand him. Her saying...Her looking at him like…

“Wait. Allie, what?”

She laughs softly, unwraps the chocolate and pops it in her mouth, and then she’s turning, closing her bedroom door. Harry’s left in the hallway, smiling, heart pounding, wanting more of her. 

-

He has a string of bad days. He can’t get out of bed. Everything is too much. Meetings are too loud and too full of opposing opinions that feel unproductive. People are looking at him for solutions he doesn’t have. Lexie told him to get his shit together as if he’s choosing to be fucking useless, and Harry just needs a goddamn break, okay? 

At night, when it’s dark and he has a shower because he thinks it might clear his head - god, he misses Xanax - he steps back into his bedroom with a towel tied around his waist, and Allie’s lying there in his bed. She looks cute in a Sailor Moon tee shirt and black shorts, her hair all over his pillow. 

“I heard you awake,” she says, which isn’t really an explanation. She doesn’t just like, get into his bed. Ever. (Well, once...) Then she sits up, swings her legs over the side of the bed. She glances his body over, which, stupidly, makes him feel like he’s not entirely without purpose, and asks, “Wanna go for a walk?”

He knows this probably just means she knows exactly how many days it’s been since he left the house. He nods, anyway. Allie turns around, tells him to get dressed. 

It’s still cold out, though there’s no snow. Everything’s melted and wet and it’s dark out and the sky’s clear. Allie’s wearing her coat and a scarf, braiding her hair over her shoulder. Harry’s hands are in his pockets because he thinks someone borrowed his gloves and he doesn’t know who has them or where they are. 

She takes them to her house. It’s fucking freezing inside, and clearly been ransacked. She seems sad for a moment, but he’s getting the sense that this isn’t her first time here - like maybe coming here is a thing she does regularly, or something. She takes his hand and leads him up the stairs. There’s a picture of Cassandra framed on the wall. Allie looks the other way.

She pulls down the stairs that lead up to the attic, and he makes a joke about her taking him up here to murder him, or something. She laughs and presses her fingers between his. They have to duck a little because the ceiling is slanted, but then she’s pushing open a window that leads them out onto the roof. It’s a flat part here; and Harry can tell this is like, a thing for her. 

She sits down, her back against the house, and Harry climbs out and sits down next to her. It’s fucking freezing, so he moves close to her so they’re pressed together. She doesn’t stop him. He actually has to keep himself from showing his surprise when she loops her arm through his and leans her head on his shoulder. 

“The big dipper used to be right there,” she says, pointing. Harry sighs. The constellations aren’t where they should be, and he’s known this for almost a year, and her reminding him isn’t helping him feel better. “I’d come out here with like...You know those hotel sized bottles of vodka?” Harry laughs, looks down at her. “Feeling all badass.”

Without really thinking, he says, “You’re definitely a badass.”

“Now,” she tells him. He wishes he knew her well enough before all this to be able to argue and say she always was. He suspects it, but can't be sure. 

“Why’d you bring me to your secret drinking spot?” he asks quietly after a moment. Allie turns her head so her chin is on his shoulder, and when he looks at her, her face is super close. They’re almost kissing. It’s so easy to want to do it. “Is it supposed to make me feel better knowing you had so much shit in your life before this that you’d sneak off alone to get drunk?”

It sounds meaner than he wants, but thank god she just laughs at him. “I’m sharing something personal,” she just says, and he nods, knowing he should’ve just assumed that and kept his mouth shut. “So you feel like you can talk to me.”

Harry takes a deep breath. “You a qualified therapist now?” 

“No,” she says seriously, and he really should try to stop making jokes, or brushing this shit off. “But neither is anyone else around here, and despite what your shit brain might be telling you, there are people here who care about you enough to worry.”

Harry smiles. His shit brain. That sorta sums it up, actually. He knows his brain and his anxiety fuck with him, and he knows he, maybe unfairly, feels like no one else in this place understands. 

“You care about me?” he asks quietly, because that seems important. Really important. Most days, he thinks he could take or leave almost everyone else here. Most days, he feels like he’s so desperate for Allie’s approval and attention that it’s almost pathetic. 

“Yes,” she tells him, then pulls back a bit so she can properly look him in the eye. There’s something soft there that he can see even in the darkness with just the streetlamp at the end of her driveway glowing. 

“Why?” he asks, looking away. 

He’s fishing. He’s not sorry.

“Remember before this?” she asks. He doesn’t know what she’s talking about. “How we used to flirt with each other randomly, even though you had Kelly and I was…” 

Infatuated with Will. He’s not gonna say it if she’s not. 

“Yeah.” 

“The reason I went along with it is because it always made me feel like I was...Special, or hot, or…” Harry puts his arm around her, she slides her hand up the inside of his thigh to his knee. Shit, that feels nice. “I knew you were just being a jerk and it didn’t actually mean anything, but. It felt good. And I liked you.” 

“I liked you, too,” he says quietly. And if he wanted to ruin the moment, he’d ask why she thought one of the first things he did when he had the chance was kiss her. It meant something. “You are special. And hot.” Allie laughs softly, shakes her head. “I liked seeing you smile.” 

She tenses next to him, then lets out a breath like she likes that response. 

“I like seeing you, period,” she confesses, and then sounds sad when she says, “I don’t wanna think about this place without you.” 

Harry holds his breath. Fuck. That feels heavy. “I’m not gonna like…”

Allie turns quickly, gets onto her knees and moves between his thighs. It scares the fuck out of him, because there’s always the chance she could fucking fall off the roof, but she’s moving around like it’s nothing. 

“Promise?” she asks, and he looks down. Allie’s hands go to his face, forcing him to look her in the eye. “Harry, fucking promise me.” 

“Okay,” he whispers. She lets her eyes close. “I promise.” 

She leans in, presses her lips to his, and then says, “Fuck,” on this little breath as she pulls away.

It makes him laugh, and she smiles at the sound. 

“Disappointed?” he asks, and Allie just turns, sits between his thighs with her back to his chest, and reaches for his hands, pulling his arms around her. 

She shakes her head. “Relieved.”

“That I kissed you back?” he asks, and feels a little bold, so he brushes his lips against her ear, feels her let out her breath. 

“That I think you’re okay.” 

It makes him tense, but she leans her head back against his shoulder and looks up at the sky. 

“Thanks for giving a shit,” he tells her, instead of making a joke about how kissing him is more than okay. 

The way Allie says, “Always,” is heavy and honest and makes his head spin, thinking he’s maybe in love with this girl or something stupid.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> post canon. prompts: sunshine + laughter

The day after the tornado blows through New Ham, the sun comes up and the birds chirp and the world carries on like nothing ever happened. Harry wants to think that’s fucked up, but then, it’s happened before, right? The world changes and then looks you in the eye like, “What are you gonna do, give up?”

Harry takes a deep breath as he waits for water to boil for dandelion tea. They ran out of coffee ages ago and he’s officially given up all his vices. He still won’t break the habit of drinking something hot in the morning. Even if it’s just hot water. It’s one of the only ‘comforts’ he can trick his brain into thinking he still has.

He hears her the moment her feet hit the bottom stair. Because she’s incapable of not stumbling around until at least 10 minutes after she’s out of bed. She could lie there for an hour and still wake up and be all squirrely. She hates it when he says that. He laughs at her reactions. 

She’s rubbing sleep from her eye when he notices her, opens his arm for her and then continues staring out the window into the front yard. The oak tree lost some branches, and there’re garbage cans and trash strewn around, but he doesn’t think the house took any damage, Allie sighs, leans against him. 

“Good morning,” she murmurs, then rubs her cheek against his shoulder a little, which he thinks is cute. He kisses her hair. 

They’d surveyed some of the damage last night after the storm. They’d holed up in the basement until it sounded like things were calm, then they all went outside to look. It was too dark to do anything, so he suggested they leave it til morning. No sense losing sleep over it when all they’ve got is time to clean it up. 

“The church roof was damaged,” she tells him, and he doesn’t know how she knows more than him already, but he’s not surprised by it at all, and doesn’t even think he’s got to ask. Doesn’t matter. “A few broken windows at the school. A tree fell on Elle’s house.”

Harry looks at her sharply. “Is she okay?”

Why wouldn’t she lead with possible injuries? It’s the reason he could hardly sleep. It’s the reason they sent Kelly, Gordie and a group of first aid trained volunteers out last night to do house checks. 

Allie nods. “She stayed with Helena.”

He lets out his breath. Figures, Helena’s the one she’s been talking to. Makes sense. 

“Come on,” he says, pours hot water into two mugs with lids. “Let’s take a walk.” 

Allie shakes her head, pulls away and leans back against the counter. “I’m not ready yet.”

Harry smiles. It’s not often he’s the pragmatist of the two. “Allie.”

She pouts a little, which is cuter than he wants it to be. “Fine.” 

When they step outside, it’s hot as fuck and the sun is blazing down on them. Allie squints, then pulls her sunglasses down over her eyes and ties her hair back off her face with a piece of ribbon; her last hair tie broke last week and he politely didn’t mention the tears he saw in her eyes about it. Harry’s got a trash bag in one hand and starts towards the road so he can pick up some of the garbage he sees as they make their way to the centre of town. 

Allie’s trailing behind him, throwing twigs and branches that aren’t too heavy to pick up off to the side of the road and away from the sidewalks. Harry picks up a plastic bag that has rotting food in it, holds it between his thumb and forefinger and fucking can’t stand that he has to do this, and then he hears Allie laughing - really, really laughing - behind him. When he turns around, she’s like 20 feet away, literally doubled over, her hair all yellow in the sun. Harry rolls his eyes. 

“Yeah, laugh it up, sweetheart,” he says, and Allie presses her lips together tight, and stands upright. He only ever calls her sweetheart sarcastically, or when they’re totally alone and quiet and… There’s a juxtaposition to it that he knows she loves. “You could help.”

“I’m helping! I kicked that pinecone all the way over there.” Harry tilts his head. If he were more of an asshole, he’d toss this bag in her direction. “Okay! Okay. I’m helping.” She starts walking towards him, then picks up a paper that’s blowing across the street. “So touchy.”

He doesn’t want to smile. She’s being a jerk. But she looks cute and he knows this is only the start of all the shit they’re going to have to do today. He knows that once they’re around other people, she’s going to go into leader mode and basically take on the bulk of the labour to sort everything out. He’ll cut her some slack. 

And he likes her laugh. Likes her happy. Likes the way she slips her hand into the back pocket of his jeans and says something about how he makes a hot trash collector.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> canon compliant. prompt: blanket

She didn’t say, “That was it?” to be insulting. She said it because if this is the thing people are willing to fight over and hurt one another for and scramble to find places to do, well, she doesn’t get it. And because she feels like all that is more evidence that it should’ve felt better than it did, she sort of has to assume that it’s not all of sex that’s bad, but maybe just this sex. 

She turns to get up, and Harry’s still holding her hair, so it tugs a bit and she suppresses a whimper. His hand moves down her arm then, rests on her hip. 

“Hey, wait,” he says, sounding...however it is he’s sounding. It’s sort of breathless and sleepy and satisfied all at once. She realizes she’s a little jealous. She wouldn’t mind feeling that, too. He laughs a little. “Where’re you going?”

Allie holds the sheets to her chest and looks over her shoulder at him. He’s looking at her face, which she kind of likes, because she knows there’s a lot of skin on display. His fingers reach up, then, sliding along the band of her bra across her back. 

“We should…”

Her breath catches. This is the same thing he said downstairs, and she’s the one who wanted this, and she doesn’t regret it, or anything, but god, she’s really shit at picking her moments, isn’t she?

“We should stay,” he says, leaning on his elbow, and the grin on his lips lets her know that he notices and probably likes the parallel, too. He sits up more, hand gently pulling at the blanket, lips pressing along her shoulder. She drops the fabric. Harry takes a breath, then his hand moves over her thigh. 

It feels good, and he’s good at this, and she doesn’t want to be a little disappointed that the rest isn’t better. Wasn’t better. She thinks they could’ve just made out and that might’ve been smarter. It might’ve kept up the picture she’s had of him in her head for like, a year, where he’s good looking (that’s still true) and a flirt (also true) and probably really, really good in bed. Which...Maybe it’s unfair of her to say that he’s not, but in her experience of it, he’s just…

“Allie,” he murmurs against her skin. “Lie down.”

She doesn’t want to do what she’s told, because she never wants to do what she’s told. 

“Why?” she asks, even as she tilts her head to the side so he can kiss her neck. She’s pretty sure she feels him smiling against her skin. She likes that, too. 

“I can make you feel really good,” he says, and she accidentally scoffs. He stills, and she looks over her shoulder. His eyes are dark, like he doesn’t appreciate the reaction. She can’t blame him, really. She’s kind of being an asshole. “If you want me to.”

Allie bites her lip, looks at him, even turns her body towards him more. He’s all messy hair and flushed cheeks, his skin glowing a little even in the dim light of his room. He’s so, so hot, and she’s always thought so, and there’s a part of her that just wants to beg him not to take away the idea she had of him in her head. (But also she knows that if she alludes to the fact that she’s thought about him and sex before, it’ll be a whole thing.)

“I want you to,” she says softly, and feels absolutely seen when he looks at her this way, like he thinks she’s special, like he wants her. 

She lies down. Harry keeps kissing her, slips his hand beneath her back to unclasp her bra with an ease that makes her feel warm all over. He tugs the blankets back up over them, asks if she’s okay. He’d asked it before, too. Twice. She thinks that for all his bluster and bullshit, he actually, genuinely cares that she’s comfortable here, in his room, like this. 

His fingers press against her, which feels almost as good as when she does it herself, and then, when her eyes are closed and his lips are against hers, he breaks to say something about using his mouth, and she knows she nods too quickly, but she’s never had anyone ever…

Allie’s hands clutch his bedding and his hands hold her hips. 

Downstairs, when he’s sitting on the counter and she walks into the kitchen, he looks at her, smiles, and she doesn’t know if he means to lick his bottom lip, but it makes her look at him through her lashes, and then look away. (It makes her want to go back upstairs and say, “Again.”)

Later, when they’re in the rain, running, and her hand slides up his back, he’ll say, “I like the way you touch me,” and she’ll want to laugh at him over the sound of the rain, and she’ll want to say something back about how she likes the way he touches her, too, but then there’s Cassandra, and that look on her face, and Allie knows this can’t be anything more than what it is.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> post-canon. prompt: “I love lying next to you I could do this for eternity”

She’s got an obsession with roofs, or something. He thinks by the time they’re 21 she’s been on every roof in the town. Even the ones that got damaged in the fire, and the one that’s just really a frame on that house on Able Street that was under construction when they got here. 

Her favourite is the high school. It’s the tallest building in town, which is fucking depressing. Other than the church steeple, which she informed him isn’t the same as being on an actual roof. He didn’t argue.

“Everything the light touches, huh?” he asks, coming up behind her. The sun’s still out, but it’ll be going down soon. He saw her coming up here and wondered if she knew he’d follow. Probably. He sticks a hand in his pocket and she looks over at him tiredly. 

“Clearing my head.”

“Mm. What’s going on in there?”

She breathes out a laugh. “Everything. Too much.”

Harry touches her hip, slides his hand along her back, and she takes a deep breath and leans into him. Sometimes he’s still surprised by how easy they are together. How simple it feels to just be with her when...God, everything was such a fucking mess that first year in New Ham. And this between them, them being...together like this isn’t exactly new, either. And it wasn’t some big thing, or whatever, they just sort of got closer, until him checking on her and her leaning into his side like this just became the way they are with one another. And there’s the fact they sort of more or less live together at her house; in her bedroom. He gave his house up a couple years ago. It was just...easier. 

“I have such a love-hate relationship with this fucking town,” she tells him, and he laughs because amen to that. “It’s so weird to miss a place but somehow also be stuck in it forever.”

Harry’s stomach falls. He still doesn’t like the idea of staying in this place his entire life. But there’s so far only one alternative, and he doesn’t want that, either. 

“I hear that,” he tells her quietly. She puts both arms around his waist. He presses his lips against her hair. “I’ve got an idea.”

She pulls away, her eyes all lit up. God, he loves that look on her face; thinks he’d do just about fucking anything to keep it there. He tells her he’ll be right back, then uses the key to get into the gym, grabs one of those blue gymnastics mats and almost falls to his death trying to climb the ladder at the side while carrying it. When she sees him, she starts laughing. 

“What the hell are you doing?” she asks, crosses her arms. 

He unceremoniously drops the mat right in the middle of the roof, and she walks over and meets him there. When he sits down, she does, too, smiling at him, her hair tickling his arm when she gets close, right where he wants her.

“We’ll watch the sunset,” he tells her. She lets out this little sound he loves, leans her chin on his shoulder. “Then the stars?”

She bites her bottom lip. “Kind of a romantic, aren’t you?”

Harry kisses her, then, finally, and plays with the ends of her hair. “I try.” It’s a dumb answer and makes her laugh. The sun starts dipping down behind the trees off in the west. “A beer would really make this perfect, you know?”

Allie shakes her head, loops her arm through his. She’s being really quiet and he’s not sure what to make of it. But he likes how close she is, likes the little smile she’s wearing, too, and the way the sky turning pink makes her lips look. 

“It’s pretty perfect,” she whispers. 

They talk about shit - the town and whatever, the meeting they had earlier - for a bit, and then the stars are coming out and Allie declares them done with business talk. She lies back, her tee shirt riding up as she does, and clasps her hands on her stomach. 

He lies back with her, and she moves so her shoulder’s pressed against his. Her knees are bent and she’s taking this deep breaths like she wants to cherish this, like she’s really enjoying it. He wonders if he should make this a regular thing for them. Like a date, or something. 

“Harry?” she asks, and he grins because he loves it when she does this. Says his name like that. Every single time she’s done it, he’s liked what’s come after. 

“Hm?”

“Maybe forever won’t be so bad,” she says, and he turns to look at her. She’s still staring up at the sky, but then turns her head. Her eyes look really pretty even in the darkness. “For us.” 

He smiles, closes his eyes and breathes in, and thinks one of these days they’ll just say out loud that they love each other. But there really isn’t a rush on it, is there? He’s not going anywhere. 

“Yeah,” he says, and leans over, kisses her gently. They both look back up at the sky. Allie reaches for his hand, presses her palm against his and clasps their fingers together. “We’ll be good.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> canon compliant. prompt: But if my eyes were on my back I know what I'd be looking at

She catches him checking her out right as she starts her little spin, watches his eyes drop down her body. It’s not the first time - god, before all this, they’d… 

It’s not the first time. And she likes it. She thinks, honestly, that’s maybe the reason she starts walking away as they’re talking. Not only because she wants to stay, wants to say yes to this stupid ask of his, but because the idea of him thinking he’s slick and looking at her like she doesn’t know he’s doing it is sort of the hottest thing she can think of. 

And she feels it later, too. When he’s unlocking his car and she’s walking towards it. Like she knows he’s looking her up and down as she walks away. Honestly, she thinks this is the way he’s looked at her the most in the entire time they’ve known each other. 

She’s not nervous to be in his room. She’s the one who suggested it. It doesn’t bother her when she steps inside and hears him click the lock on the door. She’s not stupid and she knows what they’re here for, and it’s what she wants. She looks around and he’s somewhere behind her. It’s not at all like she thought it’d be in here. There’s a lot of shit that doesn’t really fit with the guy she thinks he is. Maybe she doesn’t know him, either. 

When she turns around, he’s leaning back against his desk near the bed, his hands on either side of him. He’s got this little grin on his lips, like the one he had by the pool when she suggested this.

“So this is where the magic happens,” she says, and he laughs softly. Which is good because that was a stupid thing to say and she’s glad she can stave off embarrassment. She puts her hands in her back pockets again, watches his eyes drift downward, and turns around. She smiles, doesn’t want him to see it. “It’s like a man cave in here.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhm. You have a pool table. Who else has a pool table in their room?” she asks, runs her fingertips over the cue ball and then rolls it towards the edge of the table, watches it bounce off the felt. “And your own bathroom?”

Harry comes up behind her, then, puts his hand on her hip and pulls all her hair to one side, his fingers brushing her neck as he does it. “It is what it is.”

That’s a really weird response to what she’s said. She thinks he just wants to get on with it. Which is fine, or whatever, and she’s not stalling, necessarily, but she doesn’t want to rush, either. She steps away from him, turns to face him and watches him take a deep breath, tilt his head as he looks at her.

“My bedroom has like, a desk and a closet.” 

He laughs a little, and he just...He looks really good. Not that he doesn’t always look really good. But particularly right now, in this lighting, and that shirt, and watching her like he wants her. She steps closer, but she’s not sure what to do with her hands. He takes them in his, which feels...It feels gentle and sweet and a little like something this isn’t meant to be. Not that she doesn’t want it, but they probably shouldn’t be doing this in the first place so it’s hard to imagine them like, actually being something. 

He leans in and kisses her gently, and his lips are really soft, and she doesn’t want to be flattered or feel good about the way he’s not pushing her or rushing anything. He goes back in for more, and she smiles against his lips, and then his hand is letting go of hers, pushing right up under her sweater against her skin, and he sort of lets out a sound that she likes a lot. 

“You’re really hot,” he says, and then looks down again. Allie puts her arms over his shoulders, tugs him closer. “I kept seeing flashes of your skin tonight. Thought I might go crazy.”

She lets out a little laugh, sort of just wants to be on his bed already. “Well, why don’t you just take it off?” she suggests. 

He smiles at her like she’s giving him exactly what he’s wanted. Pushes upward with both hands, until she’s raising her arms and he’s pulling her sweater over her head. He laughs quietly at the state of her hair, then helps smooth it down with his hands, puts both on her cheeks and kisses her, tongue against her bottom lip and his hands warm and pressing against her lower back. He hasn’t even properly looked, which is another thing that’s weirdly flattering. 

She pushes away from him so she can go to the bed, looks at him over her shoulder and sees him taking a deep breath, his eyes on her body as he watches her walk. Then, when she’s sitting at the edge, he leans over, one hand on the mattress, and presses her back. Her fingers find the buttons of his shirt and she eventually gets them all undone, and then he’s standing upright to pull his shirt off, and she’s moving to the middle of the bed, lying down. Harry’s hands reach for her jeans, and he helps her out of them, and then his brow’s furrowing and he’s running his fingers over her hip. 

“What?” she asks, and looks down. There’s a bruise there, purple and angry, from where the car hit her. “Oh.”

“That was fucking terrifying, you know that?” She doesn’t know how to respond, so she doesn’t say anything. “I almost had a panic attack.”

Honestly, there's something about the way he says that that makes her believe he’s absolutely not exaggerating. And she remembers the way he’d shouted her name, the way he’d come to her side as fast as he could. 

She says something she thinks might take his mind off it, which is, “Kiss it better?” and she worries it’s really fucking stupid, but then he does it, and she swears she can feel him smiling against her skin. 

Harry kisses her forehead after, when he’s getting dressed and she’s waiting for him to leave the room before doing the same. Because he told her there’s no rush, said something sort of cheeky about how she can stay in here as long as she wants, and how it’d be sort of hot if he came back in later and she was still in his bed. But Allie just...she needs a minute on her own to process. She also doesn’t want to think it’s sweet that he gathers her clothes up for her and sets them on the bed. Like, that’s not even cute, is it? It feels sort of nice, but she doesn’t know why. 

When she goes back down to the kitchen, he just looks at her, and she turns away before he finishes. Because god, he can’t just look at her like that. Like she means something to him. 

When everyone’s leaving, he takes her by the wrist, says, “Wait,” and she listens, stands there with him until the last person is out the door, and then he kisses her, his hands on her cheeks again, her back pressing against the counter behind her. 

“What was that for?” she asks, smiling. She really likes kissing him. Could do a lot more of it, she thinks. 

He grins, reaches for his jacket. “Before we go out there and everything goes to shit.”

She should’ve taken that more seriously.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> post-canon. prompt: pregnancy scare

She fucking knew this would happen when they made the very sober, very consensual decision together in the heat of the moment. Literally, it crossed her mind when they were all over each other, and she said it out loud, and they had a laugh at, “You know with our luck, we’ll end up with a baby,” and then. Ya know. Did it anyway. 

(It felt...it felt really good, and they haven’t done that again since, and she hasn’t said out loud that she wants to but…

Jesus Christ. That is so not the point right now.)

There are no longer any pregnancy tests in town she has any confidence will be accurate; she wandered into the supply room earlier to check into it, and all the ones she could see are expired. She nicked a box anyway, because maybe it’ll be fine. Probably not. And this isn’t the kind of thing she wants to mess around with. The problem is, it’s also not the kind of thing she wants anyone else knowing about. Like, there are a lot of things that are fucked up, and asking her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend about hooking her up with an ultrasound will definitely be one of them. 

She laughs at herself for thinking she has any other options. 

The thing that’s sort of crazy is she’s not even scared. Maybe that’s because she’s lived through so much shit at this point that nothing seems that terrifying. Years ago, she’d have screamed at the idea of being pregnant at 23, but now…

Or maybe she just isn’t freaking out because she does not know for sure there’s anything to freak out about. 

She leans her shoulder against the door to their bedroom. Her bedroom that’s now their bedroom. Her house that’s now their house. Harry’s lying on the bed, book in his hands, and he’s definitely noticed she’s there but hasn’t really acknowledged her. She knows if she waits like this another few seconds, he’ll look up. 

She should’ve thought of how to say this. She’s been stewing about it for a few days. You’d think she’d have thought about the words. 

“What?” he finally asks, laughing. He sets his book down and smiles at her. Then he moves over like he’s making room for her, so she pushes off the door and walks over, lies down next to him and likes the way he immediately presses his lips against her hair. 

“Hey, so,” she starts, and the figures she should just go for it, “remember that time we didn’t use a condom, and knew that’d come back to haunt us?”

Harry doesn’t say anything. He’s still moving his thumb against her shoulder, or she’d think maybe he’s in shock. 

“Yeah,” he finally says, and she doesn’t figure she’s got to spell out the rest, but also thinks it’s sort of important to say it out loud. If not for his sake, then for hers. 

“I’m a week late.” He lets out a soft breath and she looks up at him, tips her head back. She doesn’t know what that reaction means. 

“Seriously?”

Allie tilts her head just a little, and he knows he’s being dumb, but she says, anyway, “Nope. Gotcha.” He gives her a look like maybe he doesn’t appreciate being roasted right now. “I got some tests, but they’re expired. We might have to tell Kelly.”

He pauses just a moment and then says, “Okay,” and sounds rational and calm, and then sort of smiles at her, and she…

Her brow furrows, and she moves more, and he keeps his hand on her shoulder, then moves it to her thigh. “What’s this look?” she asks. “What’s happening right now?”

He laughs a little, shakes his head. “What do you want it to be?” She thinks he’s being sincere about that, too. Like he’ll wait to feel whatever she feels. It’s annoying. “I mean.” He stops, looks at her. “You’re...do you want…”

Allie sighs. She’s been thinking about this. And the thing is, it doesn’t really matter. But still, she knows her answer. 

“No,” she answers honestly, and Harry smiles gently and nods like he gets it. She shrugs. His eyes are all soft as he watches her. “But. We knew and we did it anyway.”

Nodding, he says, “Yeah,” again. “It’ll be fine.”

“I know.” 

It’s true. It’ll be fine. Everything will be fine. They can do it. And honestly, she thinks she’ll be a good mom whenever that happens. And it’s not like she’s never thought of him as a dad before. God, it’s not like they’ve never talked about it, too. Kids. Having one or two together, maybe. They’ve been together for years. They live alone together in a home they’ve made feel like theirs. They’re good. They’re happy. They’re just, you know, young and living in an alternate universe. Which is starting to feel more and more like just the world. Like, she rarely ever thinks of their old lives anymore. 

“Want me to call her?” he asks, and Allie can tell he’s not just saying that because he thinks he’s supposed to. 

Allie shakes her head, leans over to kiss him, says, “Not yet,” because it really doesn’t feel like there’s a big fucking rush, you know? She gives him a little grin. “Wanna see what comes up on some out of date tests?”

Harry laughs, looks kind of absurdly handsome as he smiles at her. “Sure.”

She loves how calm they’re being. He goes to make them tea while she goes into the bathroom, then he brings two mugs and they lean their hips against the counter as they wait. Harry plays with her hair and neither of them moves too quickly when her phone’s timer goes off.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> post canon. prompt: “What are you doing here? It’s late.”

He’s being an asshole because his pride was hurt, or his ego, or some other part of him that makes him feel shame. Whatever. He didn’t get too far into that with his therapist before he was thrown into an alternate universe. He got into it just enough to know he’s putting distance between them so he can protect himself.

He’d just asked Allie if she wanted to come over and watch a movie, or something, and she’d given this sad look like he’d misread the situation, and said, “That’s not what this is, Harry,” all softly, and when he asked what the hell that meant, she tilted her head to the side and told him, “We’re not gonna hang out at night time.” 

And like, that sounds fucking dumb to him, okay? Not just because he likes her. A lot. Likes her enough to want to hang out with her any time, to be honest. But also because there’s something shitty there about what she’s implying about how they spent those first few nights in this place together. Partying in the church and her knowing he was watching her dance, and then fugitive, and then whatever the fuck that was at prom that didn’t really go anywhere but could’ve. And yes, that was two years ago now, and a hell of a lot has happened since all that, but…

Look, Allie likes him. He can tell she likes him. He’s not an idiot. Maybe things are fuckign odd in this place, but there are some absolutes, some things from the old universe that still apply here. And one of those things, for him, is that he knows when people are interested in him. He’s got a good read on the body language and the flirtation and the way she looks at him sometimes. The little reasons they find to touch one another. 

Yeah, for a while there it was just him doing that, because he’s never once been shy about this thing he has for Allie. But now it goes both ways. It’s her hand on his shoulder as he sits in the caf and she talks to whoever he’s sitting with. It’s her leaning into his side when he’s reading documents in the town’s offices and she wants to see what he’s got. It’s her fingers against his cheek when she’s laughing at something he’s said and pushing his face away. 

He’s not crazy. There’s something between them. And he thinks if they weren’t stuck here, it would be different. It’d go differently. And if he hadn’t done the shit he did last year, that might’ve made a difference, too. But now they’re on the same side. They’re on the same side and it matters that he cares about her. A lot. Too much, apparently. 

He still lives alone, because that’s an argument he won. Will lived with him for a bit, after everything went down, when people wanted someone to have eyes on both of them. Helena made the argument that if there were ever two people who would keep each other in check and blow the whistle if there was anything messed up going on, it was the two of them. Harry’s not going to admit this to anyone, but he thinks he and Will found some common ground during those six months. He doesn’t miss the guy, but...The house is just quiet a lot. Like, all the time. Harry finds reasons not to be here by himself, but he can’t say that out loud either, because it goes against everything he was so sure about in the beginning and people will be smug about it, or whatever. 

Honestly, sometimes he thinks about his mom fondly - when he lets himself think about her at all - and sends up a thank you to her for having not only a full wine cellar with a pinpad lock on the door, but also several cases of vodka hidden down there behind the bar that he didn’t even know were there. He doesn’t drink all the time. He thinks it’d be a whole fucking thing if he did, and he honestly doesn’t want to anymore. 

But sipping some of this port and watching Ratatouille because it’s one of the movies they own on blu-ray that he hasn't seen super recently is sort of giving him life right now.

The doorbell scares the shit out of him.

Seriously, his heart is racing and he needs to take several deep breaths after the sound of the chimes echoes through the house like that. 

When he opens the door, Allie’s standing there by herself, her little green army jacket on, her hands stuffed in the pockets as she looks up at him. 

“Can I come in?” she asks, and he wants to say no. He should say no. He should throw all that shit she said back in her face. 

But her nose is a little red because it’s still cool at night, and the bangs she cut a while back and is now growing out are sort of falling into her eyes, and he sighs and lets her in because she looks so goddamn good he knows there’s really no world in which he’d turn her away. 

Harry watches her toe off her sneakers and then shrug her jacket off. She’s wearing a sweater he’s seen on her easily 20 times before. He’s definitely thought every one of those times how much he likes it on her. 

He crosses his arms when she looks at him again, standing there in the entrance to his house. 

“What are you doing here?” he asks, and Allie presses her lips together. “It’s late.”

She sighs like she knows she deserved that. Good. 

Instead of what he thinks she’s gonna do, she just blurts out, “I wanted to say yes,” and it sort of makes him freeze. Honestly, he thinks he’s gotten pretty good at making predictions about her. This throws him. “Before. When you asked. I wanted...God, Harry. You know I wanted to say yes.”

He just watches her a second, wants to move them to the living room, or anywhere that isn’t so close to the door. He doesn’t want her to go. 

“I mean, I thought you would,” he admits, and maybe that’s really what’s bothering him. He wouldn’t have asked if he hadn’t thought she’d be down. He’s never once asked her something he didn’t think would work out for him. Not when he asked her to play fugitive, or when they were in bed together, or even after. Shit, even at prom when he’d asked her to dance, he thought she’d do it. He’s pretty sure she wanted to say yes then, too. Because she didn’t say no. 

He’s getting way too deep in his head. 

“You scare the shit out of me,” she says on this little laugh, and then walks past him and towards the sofa. He doesn’t hate it. He doesn’t like the words, but he likes that she’s not leaving. He just watches her, then sits down on the coffee table across from her. Maybe they’re too close. But he thinks he likes where this is going. “I don’t know how to do any of this.”

His brow furrows. “Any of what?”

She gives him a look like she’s irritated that she has to explain it, but he refuses to feel badly about it, to be honest. 

“I had a boyfriend for approximately two days and then fell victim to a coup. Other than that, the closest I ever came to like, dating, was…” She looks right at him, and he’s almost amused by her little rant, because it’s just so incredibly fucked up that it’s absolutely true. “You.” 

Fuck.

“Well…” He can’t help himself smiling even as he tries to play this cool. Something about Allie always makes him just put it all on the table, you know? “Well, do you want to?” She’s just looking at him. “Like, I didn’t say anything about being your boyfriend.” That’s a joke. She’s gotta pick up on the fact that it’s a joke. She must, because she looks like she’s hiding a grin. “I was just trying to get you over here to like, cuddle and maybe make out.”

She lets out a laugh and shoves at his shoulder, and he grabs her hand and holds it. She gets all quiet, but doesn’t pull away, so that feels like something. 

“That’s not all you wanted,” she says softly, and then looks into his eyes, and fuck, she… “Right?”

Right. So that’s part of this. She doesn’t want it to be some fling and nothing more. And it’s not like he’s done much to make her think he wanted to like, date her seriously or whatever, but that’s because he thought it’d scare her away. It’s not that he’s against it. He’s actually pretty into the idea. He doesn’t know of a way to casually flirt with someone while also making it clear you’re like, maybe halfway in love with them. And it’s not like he can google methods or ask anyone outside this fucking weird universe for advice, you know? 

“You’re right,” he tells her, and honestly, it’s deliberate that he uses those words, because he knows for a fact she really, really loves hearing them. And he’s telling the truth. “That’s not all I wanted.”

She smiles, then, shakes her head a little like she’s happy, but also doesn’t know what to do next. She pulls his hand hard, and he gets up and sits next to her. She maneuvers his arm so it’s around her shoulder and she curls up against him with her legs pulled up onto the sofa. 

“Pressure’s on, Bingham,” she says, her hand sort of moving across his chest. Fucking hell. “If you’re a bad cuddler, I’m outta here.”

Harry breathes a laugh, presses play on the movie she still hasn’t made fun of him for, and decides to just fucking go for it. 

He kisses her hair and says, “Whatever you say, Allie,” and puts his feet up on the coffee table.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> post canon. prompt: sprawling on the floor with the fan on and lights off

His AC breaks in summer of their second year in New Ham, when he’s got his house to himself again and Allie sleeps in his bed almost every night. 

He does not know how to fix a central air conditioner. It’s not like he can just google it or call a repair service. He spends three days trying to research and tries a couple things and ultimately cannot fucking get it to work. 

Allie’s house has AC, but it also has people in it. 

He’s drinking iced coffee in the kitchen, sitting at the counter with an old National Geographic in front of him. He found three boxes of them in the basement storage room and he’s kind of into reading them and learning things, even though he’s sure lots of the facts and figures are outdated. 

“Jesus,” she says when she walks in. He has all the windows closed and blinds pulled, but it’s still sweltering in here. This has to be the hottest day of the year. “You can’t live like this.”

He shrugs. What’s the alternative? 

(He’s suggested an alternative that Allie’s vetoed. The alternative being that they just move into the house next door, the GIffords’ old place. It’s been empty and he knows there’s a spare key in his safe.) 

“Don’t be so stubborn,” she says, but she’s grinning, because they both know she’s about the most stubborn person around. “Just come stay with me.”

“Mm. Sure. Me and Will can pop popcorn and braid each others’ hair,” he says, turns the page on this story about this weird fish that lives in the Congo River. “I was just going to sleep in the basement until it gets cooler.”

Allie heaves a deep sigh like he’s being unreasonable. Which he isn’t really. Will wants him around about as much as Harry wants Will around. Which is not at all. Which drives Allie crazy, but, admittedly, she does a good job of balancing her friendship with her best friend and her relationship with her boyfriend. 

“Okay, well,” she says, and then her lips twist and he thinks she’s up to something. “If we’re gonna sleep down there, we should at least make it fun.”

Harry’s brow goes up. “What’ve you got in mind?” 

She gives him a look like yes, absolutely that. They just look at each other a moment, and then she smiles and he smiles and she continues talking.   
“Movies and snacks, bare minimum.” 

Mhm. Right. Movies. 

To her credit, she manages to ignore his hand until two thirds of the way through Independence Day. 

Afterward, they’re lying on the floor, naked, sweat drying on their skin. It’s the first time all day he’s felt cool. Allie’s hip is pressed against his and she laughs after a moment, then takes a deep breath and lets it out. 

“What?”

“Your ceiling fan makes a weird noise.”

His brow furrows and he looks over at her, barely able to make out her shape in the darkness. “What? No it doesn’t.”

“Mhm. Listen.” She waits a moment, then emulates the sound, which is absolutely hilarious and makes him laugh. “I can’t sleep with that going on.”

Harry leans up on his elbow, uses his left hand to draw a line down her stomach and then back up. 

“Well, we didn't even make it through one movie.” His fingers drag over her hip and she sucks in a breath just like he knew she would. “And honestly, who needs sleep, anyway?”

She pulls him closer, kisses him a few minutes before pushing at his chest. “Nope. Too hot.” 

She curls herself against him, and falls asleep while the big last scene of the movie plays. In the morning, he teases her about the whole thing with the fan noise, considering she was able to sleep with an action movie on. 

In the morning, she also presses her naked body all up against his and kisses along his jaw and says, “Let’s stay down here all day,” and he just breathes out, “Okay,” which makes her laugh, too.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> post canon. prompt: naps

He claims he’s not a nap guy. As if someone can be ‘not a nap person’. 

She is absolutely a nap person. She loves naps. She’s come to like a lot of things about this situation - either as a method of self-preservation or because it’s genuinely kind of nice - and one of them is that she can nap every day if she wants to. Literally every day. 

Getting Harry to get into bed with her is honestly never a chore, except between the hours of 1 and 4pm. Prime napping time. He says he gets bored. That once he’s up, he’s up until bedtime, unless he’s depressed, but that’s different. 

So when she comes home and he’s asleep in their bed in the middle of the day, it’s really not surprising that she gets a little scared. She considers getting into bed with him, but wants to give him space and hopes to god he comes to her if he needs support. He should know by now that he can. He’s still sleeping when she awakes from her own nap on the sofa. But then he’s in good spirits when he comes downstairs. She’s confused. Or concerned. Or, really, a lot of both.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, laughing a little, probably at the way her brow is furrowed at him or something as she looks him over.

“You never nap.”

He rolls his eyes and leans over to kiss her forehead, then heads to the kitchen. He pours a glass of water, and laughs again, says, “What?” when he notices her staring. “I was on maintenance with Luke this morning. It’s hot out. I’m fine.”

Allie gets up, goes to the kitchen and stands in front of him. She reaches for his hip. There’s a little hole in his white tee shirt near the hem at his hip. It’s such a stark reminder that their lives are so different from before. Harry Bingham never would’ve been seen with a hole in his clothing prior to all this. 

“Hey,” he says, bending his head a little, his voice soft. “I’m fine.”

Honestly, him repeating it in this tone somehow makes her believe it. “Are you?”

He nods, and she lets out her breath. “Plus, you kept me up last night.”

Allie tuts out a laugh and turns her head to look away from him. Of course he’d say something like that. Of course he’d look all hot and smug about it. And he’s not wrong, really. She thinks it’s definitely the yard work in 95 degree heat that had him wanting a nap and not so much her kissing him when she couldn’t sleep and waking him up. But anyway.

“I mean, if you don’t want me to do that again, I can…”

He cuts her off with a kiss, his fingers slipped through the belt loop on her jeans to keep her close. She doesn’t mind. 

“Next time, get into bed with me,” he says, and god, he smells so good. He must’ve showered before when he got home from his shift. She blinks up at him, and he grins. “To nap.”

She has about 10 different responses to that in her mind, but all she says is, “Okay,” and leans against him a little and asks if he wants to go swimming with her later.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> post canon. prompt: thunderstorms

He shouldn’t be thinking about it, but he is. Because it’s hard not to. Honestly, it’s hard not to think about her, specifically, at the best of times. But right now in particular. Because they’re sharing a tent and her sleeping bag is pressed up against his and she’s flinching every time there’s a thunder strike. And Harry does his best, most of the time, to keep his distance. Because he thinks that’s what she wants. So he’s not touching her other than where they’re all lined up on his right side. But he wants to. Which also isn’t new. 

What’s he fucking even doing? They’re at the Outpost because...well, exile, or punishment, or whatever this is supposed to be. As if it’s difficult to be away from all the people who hate him. And near the one person who should but doesn’t. Allie’s...Allie’s forgiven him, and they get on, and he thinks, honestly, that the punishment for her is having to spend time with him. Which feels like shit. Except she doesn’t seem to think it’s like, the worst thing they could’ve done, and Harry thinks, sometimes, that they’re actually friends. Like yesterday when they were planting and it was sunny and gorgeous out and Allie had taken a break to french braid her hair and started laughing out of nowhere. When he asked her what it was all about, she asked if he remembered this one Kelly Clarkson song, and then started singing it, really loudly and badly, with her head tipped back and him laughing at her. 

Like, she doesn’t hate him. And sometimes when they wake up in this stupid tent, his hand is on her back or hers is on his arm, and they just don’t talk about it, or anything. But he notices. And the way she sort of avoids looking at him in the mornings makes it clear to him that she notices, too. 

Her eyes are slammed close when the lightning strike illuminates her face as he looks over. He never would’ve thought she’d be scared of storms. God, it’s hard to imagine her being scared of anything. 

Maybe he can distract her. 

“You know, the last time we were together during a storm was…”

“Oh, my god. Shut up.” 

He laughs, looks over again, and she’s biting back a smile. Which is one of the things she does often enough when they’re around each other that it registers as one of his favourite expressions. 

He rolls onto his side, props himself up on his elbow. She’s still close to him, which...It’s really something. One of his favourite things, probably. She’s sort of just lying there on her back looking up at him, which, given that he’s talking about the one and only time they hooked up…

He clears his throat. 

“Bet you’re blushing,” he says, and she switches on the lantern by her side and stares straight at him. 

“I am not.” She absolutely is, but he’s not going to argue. He’s just going to be quietly satisfied about this fact. “It’s crazy to think how much has changed.”

She’s right obviously. In just under a year, it’s like a completely different world. Well, it is. You know what he means. 

But…

Look, Harry feels a peace out here alone with Allie that he’s never felt before, and he doesn’t think that’s totally attributed to the quiet and the working with his hands and the removal of all his favourite distractions. 

“And how much hasn’t,” he says quietly, not looking at her. He plays with the zipper pull on her sleeping bag. When it was colder weeks and weeks ago, he’d suggested they zip their bags together, but she’d vetoed it. 

Her brow furrows quickly like she doesn’t know what he means. But she does. She must, right? 

He’s never been shy about how he feels about her. Even if he isn’t entirely sure himself. But whatever strikes him in any given moment, he doesn’t really hide. Like when she was singing yesterday and he’d just placed his hand on the butt end of his shovel and stood there watching her… He’s pretty sure she was able to see on his face exactly how much he was enjoying the show.

“Yeah, well,” she says, and she’s still trying not to smile, which… “Last time I was in bed next to you, it was by choice.”

She’s teasing. He can tell. He’s not offended, really. Not totally. Not much. 

But he just blinks down at her. 

“It’s a big tent, Allie,” he reminds her. Because that’s true, too. They just happen to sleep in the middle of it. That’s not a mistake.

She looks right at him when she says, “So what?” in this soft voice like she, too, knows it means something and she isn’t going to argue him on that. 

Thunder crashes and it sounds like it’s literally right above them. She jumps a little, her leg knocking his, and on instinct his hand moves to her stomach over her sleeping bag. 

“Can I?” he asks, and maybe he doesn’t even know what he’s fucking asking, but she’s nodding and moving closer, which is...It’s good. It’s - he realizes - exactly what he wanted. What he has wanted. She moves all up against him, which feels good and nice, but there’s a bit of an obstacle in the form of their sleeping bags stopping them from being as close as they could be.

“I’ve never been afraid of storms,” she tells him, and then she tugs her arm free and slides it over his ribs and up his back, which feels better than it should. It’s just...he hasn’t really been touched this gently in a while. “It’s just so quiet, you know?”

“I know,” he says. They’ve talked a lot about the quiet. Like, a lot. He thinks, honestly, it’s why they haven’t fought at all; if they weren’t talking, it might be nearly unbearable. “This is nice.”

She lets out a soft laugh, looks up at him, her lashes looking super long from this angle. They should turn the lantern off to preserve battery life. Whatever. “I’ve always suspected you were a cuddler, Bingham.”

Harry grins, resists the temptation to press a kiss right to the middle of her forehead. 

“Think a lot about spending time in my arms, Allie?” 

She just ducks her head against him, lets out a hum, and says, “Who hasn’t?”

It’s a stupid non answer and absolutely not based in the truth at all. He doesn’t say anything about it. 

15 minutes later, when the thunder gets even louder and the rain is beating down on the tent, Allie pulls away and starts fully unzipping her sleeping bag, then looks annoyed at him just watching her do it. She says, “Come on!” all impatiently until he cooperates so they can zip their sleeping bags together. And then she tells him to stop looking so smug. 

He does not do as she says.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> post canon. prompt: “No one has hands this soft.”

In hindsight, he should’ve known all along she’d be the one to save him. 

She’s the one saving everyone, yeah, but she’s also the only thing since they got here that’s made him feel anything at all. Anything. On the days when his head is more clear, he tries to think back before all this, because that sentiment might stretch timelines, or universes, or whatever. But that feels too big and too heavy, and when his head’s that clear it usually means he needs another pill to quiet all the things he doesn’t want to or shouldn’t think about.

He’s got a very loose grasp on reality at the best of times. At the worst of times, he knows every detail and it’s like he’s trying to stop a freight train with his pinky finger and half a plan. Campbell loves it the same amount Lexie hates it. The night she comes to Harry and asks him why he’s so fucking useless, he tell sher to go fuck herself and feels like phsyically removing her from his place and leaving him here to rot. He does not do that. No, she leaves on her own. Which somehow feels worse.

Campbell tells him they need to make an example of Allie and Will. Harry doesn’t know what that means, but it sounds psychotic and thankfully he’s not the only one who thinks so. Campbell looks legitimately furious at being defied, tells Harry, “You and me, we’ll talk about this later,” and Harry doesn’t give a fuck what that means. 

Driving is a stupid idea. He took a handful of pills before, washed them down with tequila from his dad’s office, the bottles locked away behind the glass doors in the built-in bookcases. And then the silence of his house feels unfamiliar and deafening, and he drives out to the bridge at the edge of town, considers how easy it’d be to go right off the edge. But he doesn’t have the nerve for that, either. Even when he’s this fucked up he knows he’s too much of a coward to go through with it. 

He gets out of the car and something in his head tells him to lie down on the ground. It’s cold as fuck and he has no hat or gloves, just zips his coat as high as it’ll go and stuffs his hands in his pockets. At some point it starts to snow and the flakes falling against the black sky are sort of trippy and mesmerizing. He can’t tell if he blacks out or falls asleep. There’s a difference. Lately it’s getting harder to tell which is which.

When he comes around, it’s to warm hands pressing against his face, someone’s weight sort of pushing into his side. He doesn’t want to open his eyes. He likes the way it feels to be close to someone. To have someone want to be close to him. It’s been so long it almost makes him fucking cry, or something. 

He smells her perfume and then feels himself smiling, and yeah, this makes so much sense now. So much sense. When he blinks up at her, the sky is pale blue behind her and he only just realizes that her fingers are against his neck now for a reason. 

She looks scared. Like, she looks pretty with her hair falling down like that and the sky behind her making her eyes extra blue, but she looks scared. Frantic. 

“I thought you were fucking dead,” is what she says, and Harry leans up on his elbows, which makes her shift away a little. Snow falls off his body and onto the ground. He’s fucking freezing, shivers and glances over at his car, still sitting there crooked on the bridge. He’s thankful he didn’t leave it running and kill the battery, can feel his keys in his pocket. “What are you doing?”

He presses his palm against his eye. He can’t reel the tips of his fingers. Allie’s fingers circle his wrist and pull his hand away from his face. She’s so warm. So warm and soft and fucking pretty, and he wishes he could figure out what he needs to do to deserve more of this. More of her. 

He flips his hand, presses his palm against hers, slips his fingers up into the sleeve of her jacket. She’s really waiting for an answer. 

“No one has hands this soft,” he says, and she doesn’t really react. Probably because it’s a fucking dumb thing to say and doesn’t make sense because she can’t hear his thoughts. She doesn’t know that he’s thinking about the fact she’s the only one who’s touched him with even an ounce of affection in months. 

It’s fucking depressing. 

“Harry.” 

He takes a breath. His lungs hurt. He doesn’t think he can fully register how cold he is. He also needs the pill he has tucked away in his pocket, but he doesn’t know how to slip it into his mouth without her noticing. He doesn’t want her to notice. He also doesn’t want to be sober. 

He has a fucking problem. 

“I’m good.” Her eyes narrow like he’s insane, which… She can clearly see that this is not normal behaviour. She doesn’t seem to get how he could brush it off. He just doesn’t want her looking too closely, if he’s being honest. She might start to see all his scars. “Seriously. It’s fine.”

“Clearly,” she says, voice a little too clipped to actually convey that she agrees or believes him. She sighs, reaches up and brushes snow from his hair. When she leans in to reach it, he moves his hand so it’s on her waist, which maybe she won’t like, but he’s bad with impulse control. “I’m coming with you.”

He looks around, then, realizes she must’ve walked, and wonders what the fuck she’s doing out in this shit. She’s got her little winter boots on her feet, and her puffy coat, and this headband that looks like it was knit for her, or something, covering her ears. 

“Why?” he asks, which sounds like a question on what she’s said, not him questioning her being out here at all, let alone walking in the freezing cold and snow like, a half hour from her house. 

She pins him with a look that’s heavy and deep and something he can’t make himself look away from. 

“Because I don’t trust you to actually take care of yourself.”

Yeah, that’s too honest, too. 

He reaches into his pocket when he realizes it’s no use fighting her on it, pulls his keys out and places them in the palm of her hand. She looks at him like he’s crazy, but he doesn’t care. She gets up, brushes the snow off her pants and then reaches down with her hand, stares at him until he puts his in hers so she can help him up. 

“If I were you, I wouldn’t be this nice to me,” he tells her when she’s sliding into the driver’s seat and then trying to figure out how to adjust the seat. 

“Yeah, well,” she says, and then finds the power button, moves the seat forward and cranks the key in the engine. She blasts the heat and he puts on the seat warmers as they wait for the engine to heat up. She glances over at him. “That’s not what I’ve heard.”

He doesn’t know what that means. He also doesn’t know what she’s heard and from whom. Anyone in the meetings he’s in turned on her and betrayed her. Unless…

“What’ve you heard?”

She shakes her head, rubs her hands up and down her thighs over and over and Harry...he thinks he’s a little obsessed with her, because he can’t stop thinking about how much he’d rather she was touching him again. 

She curses when she throws the car into drive and presses the gas and the car jolts. Harry laughs, leans his head back against the headrest. He’s legitimately never seen her drive before, but he assumes she knows how and just isn’t used to this kind of car. Harry notices the time on the dash. He really needs to take this pill before his hands start shaking harder. 

When Allie pulls into his driveway, she cuts the engine and gets out, uses his keys to open the front door. A gust of warm air hits him and he just watches her take off her boots and jacket, then her little headband. Her hair is a disaster and her cheeks are pink and she’s standing there waiting for him. 

Harry realizes he’s never been alone with her like this, which kind of fucks him up. Because he’s thought a lot about it. 

“Go run a warm shower. I’ll make something to eat.”

Harry catches her hand before she can step away towards the kitchen. “Allie.” She stops, turns, glances at where he’s holding her hand. He doesn’t care. He wants to and she’s not pulling away. Her skin is so fucking soft. He wants her close to him. “Seriously. Why are you doing this?”

She looks a little mad that he’s asking. She clenches her jaw a couple times, then says, “That’s my business,” which is a really unsatisfactory answer. “If you think I’d just leave you there alone, you don’t know me at all.”

She’s right. She’s totally right. He does know her. He knows her well enough to know she wouldn’t leave him or anyone else in need of help totally on their own. She doesn’t have it in her. 

She’s better than he is that way. 

He doesn’t know what to say to her other than, “Thanks,” and he wants to kiss her - he always wants to kiss her - but that feels like crossing 10 different lines. 

She hesitates a moment, then nods gently, squeezes his hand. “I’ll bring everything up to your room?”

“Third door on the left.”

“Yeah, I…” She looks away from him, might be smiling but he can’t really tell. “I remember.”

The last thing Harry sees before she turns around is the pink on her cheeks. He might be riding that high for a while. 

He still slips that pill into his mouth as he’s ascending the stairs, swallows it dry and then closes his eyes and takes a series of deep breaths as his shower heats up. 

He knows he doesn’t deserve her, but she doesn’t seem to care about that. Maybe he should stop thinking about it that way, too.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> post canon. prompt: “The thought of losing you scares me.”

She can’t sleep, which is more of a general statement than just a fact about this one evening. She feels like she’s stuck between two realities and doesn’t know which one she can trust. Which is a thing she’s told her mom, who just told her she’s home now, that everything’s okay now. Allie would believe it more if her parents didn’t look so fucking devastated all the time. 

Two of their daughters disappeared and only one came back. She doesn’t even blame them.

It’s probably super fucked up of her to wander around town in the middle of the night, but there’s something about it being quiet that makes her feel normal. Like, the world is fucking loud. It’s why she hasn’t gone to college yet. Why she and most of her friends deferred. God, the idea of going to New York and being around all those people still freaks her out, and she’s coming up on the end of her gap year. She doesn’t know what the fuck she’s going to do, honestly. 

Seems like a problem for another night. 

She’s on the swings at the park at the edge of her neighbourhood. Sometimes she brings her earbuds with her, but not tonight. Tonight it’s just her and the wind blowing the leaves. 

She hears a car engine, which isn’t weird, really. Like, their town is sleepy, but it’s not like everyone just passes out until 5am, or whatever. There are cars out and around every time she does this. Which is often - too often. 

This car sounds familiar. She thinks she could pick it out blindfolded. She knew it’d be him before she even laid eyes on the shiny black paint, the blue tint of the headlights. 

She sees him duck his head to look out the windshield when he sees her, and he pulls into the parking lot, his headlights almost blinding her as he gets out. He doesn’t lock the car. He pockets his keys and comes over, sits on the swing next to hers and pushes just slightly with his feet in his sneakers. Allie likes that. She smiles to herself. 

“Nightmares?” he asks, and...Look, this is far from the first time they’ve spoken, okay? They talk a lot. They do this a lot. 

Allie shakes her head. “No, just...Insomnia, or something.”

He hums, pauses. Allie glances over at him. “You could’ve called. You know I’m always up, too.”

She smiles a bit and looks down, leans back in her swing and then pushes hard, pumps her legs to get some momentum. “I can’t just call you every time I’m bored, Harry.”

He turns his body a little so he can watch her. She doesn’t let herself go too high. She thinks the squeak of the chains on the metal bar is irritating. 

“I think you can do anything you set your mind to.” She rolls her eyes, though he won’t see. 

She knows how he feels about her. She knows how they feel about each other. They aren’t anything, really, other than this. And it’s good. They don’t talk about it, because it’s too much. They can’t really handle it. She thinks they decided that without having to say it out loud, and she honestly loves him a little for that. 

She slows down, drags her feet on the pebbles and then just sort of rocks a little like he is. He reaches over and pushes at her hair. He does that a lot, too. She leans away, cuts him a look, and fixes her own hair while he lets his hand drop to his lap. 

“What’s up with you?” she asks, because she realizes she hasn’t checked in on him, and that’s a thing she likes to do with some regularity. “Bad dreams?”

“Mm.” It’s non-committal, so she doesn’t know if it’s really true or not. But she does know that sometimes he has dreams, too. Mostly about how they got home and how awful it was. She gets that. It’s the same for her. “Yeah, I got really scared.”

She still can’t tell if he’s joking or if he isn’t.

“Of what?” she asks, because if he’s being truthful, he’ll tell her, and if he’s teasing, he’ll make her laugh. She’s good with either. 

“Lots of things.” Right. So, he’s being serious. She wraps her fingers around the chains on the swing and tilts her head at him. “Honestly...Honestly, the thought of losing you scares me.”

He finally looks at her again, and they just watch each other, and she reaches over, slides her hand down his arm until they’re holding hands. 

“Still here,” she says, gives him a little smile. He smiles back. She feels sort of childish and free and good just sitting on the swings holding hands with him. Like there’s nothing other than just them. It’s things like this she likes best, really. “Sometimes I think I’m invincible.”

Harry squeezes her hand. And she meant that as a joke, but he says, “You’re not,” and yeah, now he’s definitely referring to how they got back here.

She squeezes his hand back. 

“I should get you to drive me home,” she says, but neither of them makes a move to leave. He’s being really quiet. He’s usually the one making things feel a little lighter. “Wanna stay again?” 

He looks over at her, smiles a bit. “Yeah?”

Allie nods, stands up and closes the space between them. She puts her hands on his shoulders, and his go to her hips. “I think my mom’s getting used to waking up and finding you in my bed.”

“Mm,” he says, and his thumb slips up under her shirt, which...They don’t even do that. Like, at all. When he’s in her bed, they’re fully clothed and sleeping. Or talking. But… Look, it’s just easier for them both to sleep when they’re not alone. “She just pities me because I’m an orphan.”

Allie laughs too loudly, considering it’s a fucking awful joke and it’s also the middle of the night. Harry grins up at her like the sound makes him happy, or something. 

(And he’s not an orphan. He’s just...There was a trial and a whole thing, and someone had to take the fall for the whole incident. Considering his mom masterminded it, it was pretty cut and dry.) 

“Secretly,” she says, all soft and gently as he stands and weaves their hands together. They start towards his car. “Secretly, I think she likes that you can get me to do that.”

“Yeah?” he asks, and she knows that grin. Knows he’s about to say some joke at her expense. “Let out that ridiculous laugh you have?”

Allie shoves at him, calls him a dick, but he just wraps an arm around her shoulder and presses his lips against her temple.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> post canon. prompt: sitting on the porch at night

Normally, the sight of someone on his steps in the dark would freak him out. But this is different, because there’s just enough light on her for him to know who it is. And he’s always happy to see her. Unfortunately, he sometimes thinks. Because she’s never here for long enough. Not ever. Not once. 

He wonders what it is this time. Why it is she’s here, in this universe again. As one of the few who can move easily between this one and the other, he’s honestly always going to be suspicious of her motives. 

It’s quiet as he walks up the drive. But that’s not new, either. 

She’s leaning back on her hands, and there’s a beer between her feet. She must’ve brought a case with her. Honestly, he kind of loves her for that. As he gets closer, he sees there’s another bottle there. She’s waiting for him. Alcohol as a peace offering, or something. Or maybe an invitation.

He knows she’s already been inside. He knows she always waits on the front steps now, after that time last year she was inside and scared the shit out of him because he had no idea she was there. 

She smiles when she sees him. That fucks him up, too. But at least not in a bad way. No, it just makes him feel too much, same as always.

“Hey, Harry,” she says all sweetly, like she’s happy to see him, too. 

He leans down to kiss her. She inhales deeply through her nose and curls her fingers into his shirt. 

“Hi.”

“I always forget how quiet your neighbourhood is,” she says, and Harry pops the cap off his beer bottle, takes a sip. He never even really liked beer, but it’s growing on him under these circumstances. Grizz keeps trying to make homebrew. It’s getting better, but it’s still not even as good as this mass produced brand. 

“I don’t know how you do it over there,” he tells her, and he can feel her watching him. “All the noise and people.”

Honestly, he never would’ve thought he’d want this - to stay behind and take a leadership role on this place when two thirds of the only people who were ever here were able to go back and wanted to. But he went back for a bit, too, and his house was just as quiet, just with more people in it who were supposed to care about him and didn’t. And the media and government attention was too much - too loud - and the people he liked the most, with a few key exceptions, all decided to stay. 

“Have you seen Sam?” he asks, and Allie laughs, nods. Harry grins a little and looks down between his knees. She loops her arm through his and leans her head against his shoulder. “At least it’s a nice ring, right?”

She turns her face, looks up at him. “I think it’s cute they’re married.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “They’re not married. It was a civil ceremony, or whatever.”

She’s still just watching him. “I heard you did a beautiful job officiating.” He sighs, not knowing what to say to that. 

Not knowing how, really, to talk about this thing he wants with her that he’ll probably never get. She won’t stay here because she thinks she’s the only thing her parents have left. Most of the time, he can’t decide if that’s selfish or selfless of her.

“I’m pretty good with words.”

She laughs quietly. “I know you are.” Yeah, she’s definitely referring to the last time she was here, when he couldn’t stop himself and said a bunch of shit he’d been holding back for like two years. She kisses him again, then pulls away and reaches for her beer. “You know, I love this house.”

Harry, for some reason, looks behind him at the front door. It’s a dumb thing to do. He knows she loves the house. She’s told him that before. Six months ago, or something, when she came by, she told him she went to his place in the other world and his mom looked at her like she was crazy, asked what she wanted. 

His mom, for some reason, thinks it’s Allie’s fault that he’s here. As if he wants to really be anywhere Allie isn’t. It’s definitely not because of her. 

“I know.” 

It’s too hot to be sitting out here and not inside, where the AC’s kept at a reasonable temperature. 

“I was thinking,” she says, and then doesn’t finish, not really. It's like she loses her nerve, or something, so he glances over at her and sees she’s smiling softly to herself. He hums to get her to keep talking. “I could stay.”

He thinks he might lose his breath. He’s staring at her, and she finally looks over, looks almost pleased with herself for getting this reaction from him.

“What?”

She shrugs. “For the summer, at least?” Yeah, she sounds less sure now. Like she’s not sure what he’ll say. And honestly, he doesn’t actually know what to say, because he’s got a lot of fucking questions, but he does know he’s happy. God, to have her here for more than a week at a time would be… “I take this kind of super hot look on your face as a yes?”

“You think you have to ask?” He puts his arm around her, pulls her closer, then tips her chin up with the tips of his fingers. Her tongue almost immediately swipes against his lip, and if they were anywhere else - if they were in the other place - he’d suggest they go inside right now. But they’re fine here. No one’s around. 

“You’ll have me?” 

Fuck

She knows exactly what she’s doing, with her fingers in his hair and his lips against the underside of her jaw. He lets out his breath. 

“You know the answer, Allie,” he reminds her, pulls back. She pouts a little, then presses her beer bottle up to her lips again, as if she has any reason to be smug over getting him to admit the thing they both know without a shadow of a doubt. He grins at her, puts his hand up in her hair to bring her closer. “You know I’m gonna try to make it impossible for you to leave, right?”

She lets out this little sound he’s missed so fucking much, and then nods. “I know,” she says, her lips brushing his. “And I’m here anyway.”

Harry kisses her deeply before he stands, reaches for her hand. 

She’s here anyway.


End file.
